At the Movies with Governor Tom: El Cid

I mean there's long overdue, and then there's looooong overdue. El Cid--finally, at looooong last--is getting the DVD treatment. Released today, it's the first title under the Weinstein brothers' new DVD imprint called Miriam, named after their mom. In honor of the release, the ArcLight Hollywood screened El Cid last night on a brand new print in 70mm Technirama Technicolor. Man, what a treat, ya know? Mind you, I'd never seen El Cid in my life but always wanted to. It's one of those classics that you've always wanted to see, always known you should see, but hadn't gotten around to seeing because of a little annoyance called life.

What made last night extra special were the in-person guests who stuck around afterward to chat about the film. I'm not talking about anyone directly involved with making this bad boy epic. Nah, they're mostly dead now. I'm talking about their progeny. You've got Bill Bronston, son of El Cid producer Samuel Bronston. He was the main guy, who helped introduce the screening with Los Angeles Times critic Pete Hammond and then helped moderate the Q&A afterward. Then you had Nina Mann, daughter of El Cid director Anthony Mann. I also got to see Juliet Rozsa, daughter of Hungarian composer Miklos Rozsa, who scored the film. The fourth and final guest was this short stocky writer named Mel Martin. His connection to this thing was that last November he published a book about Samuel Bronston entitled The Magnificent Showman: The Epic Films of Samuel Bronston.

El Cid was based on the life of this guy named, you guessed it, El Cid. Actually that wasn't his real name. Dude's name was Rodrigo Diaz, and his claim to fame was that he was a brilliant military and political leader who helped teach the Christians and Moors of Spain how to get along. The name "El Cid" comes from the word for "chief" in a Spanish Arabic dialect. At the peak of his career, El Cid had an army at his command that consisted of both Christian and Moorish troops, something unheard of at the time. What's a Moor, you might ask? Basically a Moor was a Spanish-born Muslim of either Arabic or especially Berber (i.e. North African) descent. I say especially Berber because the word Moor comes from the Ancient Greek word for "black" or "very dark."

El Cid lived from around 1044 to 1099. Spain at this time was, to put it subtly, a God damned mess, a blood-drenched dog pile of religious quibbling of a Christian-versus-Muslim nature. Golly shucks, sound familiar? Anyway, it was even worse than that. Both the Christian and Moorish camps were riven from within with more in-fighting than an episode of The Sopranos. In other words, Spain was the geographical equivalent of a piñata, all beat to shit with cracks and divisions all over the place. What made matters hairier was that you had Muslims from North Africa who wanted to make Spain an all-Muslim nation. In a sense, Spain wasn't much different from the rest of Europe. Religious conflict was spilling the blood of just about everyone and their cousin across that beleaguered continent. El Cid, although Christian, wasn't trying to conquer all Moors everywhere. That's what set him apart. He saw that, like Christians, Moors were people too and were just trying to get through this great puzzle called life. He helped them get along, and it got him in just as much trouble with his Christian brethren as it did with the Moors.

I won't give the whole film away. At three solid hours, it's too long in the first place. And secondly, why would I want to spoil everything there is to know about this gem? Here are the basics. The film starts in the year 1080, when Rodrigo Diaz is in his mid thirties or so, which is actually about the age Charlton Heston was when he made this. First, we meet the film's villain, some warlord named Ben Yussef who lives in North Africa and wants to take over all of Spain. He just needs the help of various emirs (i.e. chieftains) who are already set up in Spain. We never see Ben Yussef's face by the way. We see his angry eyes, but the rest of his face and head are always bound up in black garb.

So anyway, while on his way to his wedding one day, our hero Rodrigo comes across a Christian town under attack from some of the emirs working for Ben Yussef. Rodrigo wins handily, but when the citizens of the town demand that he execute the emirs, Rodrigo's like, "Nah. I think I'll let them live. And not only that, I won't even take them prisoner. Y'all emirs can go on home now." The emirs are so grateful that they swear to be his ally whenever he may need them. One of them right then and there dubs Rodrigo El Cid. Obviously this act of clemency won't sit well with the high-ups in this part of Spain.

The part of Spain I'm referring to is the kingdom of Castile. Remember what I said earlier, right? Spain is a fractured land, split into innumerable independent principalities. Rodrigo lives in Castile, which at this time is ruled by this one old guy named Ferdinand. Anyway, remember how I said Rodrigo was on his way to a wedding? Well, the woman he's all set to marry is a hottie named Jimena, played by Sophia Loren. Jimena's dad is this important guy named Count Gomez. Besides being a count, Gomez is the King's Champion. I'm not entirely sure what exactly being the King's Champion entails, but put it this way, Count Gomez is someone who can talk to King Ferdinand pretty much whenever he wants.

Rodrigo's engagement to Jimena runs into a little roadblock, namely that he allowed those emirs to walk away unpunished after that battle at the very beginning of the film. I cannot emphasize enough how pissed off everyone is back at King Ferdinand's castle. Even Rodrigo's dad Don Diego, who used to be the King's Champion, isn't so sure his boy did the right thing. Still, family's family, and Dad sticks by him. Unfortunately he's the only one who does. Count Gomez demands that his future son-in-law be reprimanded in some way. When Don Diego defends his boy in front of the court, Count Gomez calls him a name or something. I forget what he says, but in the parlance of the day, he dishonors the name of Rodrigo's pop.

Rodrigo is livid. He doesn't give two shits if he's about to marry Count Gomez's baby girl or not. An insult's an insult, and it must be avenged. So he challenges his future father-in-law to a duel and promptly kills him. Naturally this throws a damper on his engagement. Not only does Jimena change her mind about marrying Rodrigo, but she plots to have him killed. 'Member those emirs Rodrigo saved at the beginning? They help foil Jimena's plot.

Believe it or not, Rodrigo and Jimena do get married, but her poor mind is a tornado. You see, Rodrigo in the meanwhile has been redeeming himself in the eyes of King Ferdinand. In fact, he even becomes the new King's Champion after winning this one jousting contest that determined the king's claim to some chunk of land. And it wasn't a Moor claiming this land, but another Christian ruler. You see what I mean by in-fighting? Anyway, so Rodrigo's become fairly popular now with the Castilians, but he did kill Jimena's father. So Jimena consigns herself to some convent out in Nowheresville where she studied as a youngster.

Meanwhile, King Ferdinand dies, and his kingdom is threatened with internal division between his two sons, Sancho and Alfonso. The main bad guy, Ben Yussef, takes advantage of the situation and has Sancho murdered. But just because Alfonso becomes king doesn't mean all's well in Castile. He has a major falling out with Rodrigo, so the ol' Cid Man goes off to his wife at the nunnery. The two of them decide to live in peaceful exile, away from all the noise. By now Jimena loves her man again. In fact, they sort of do it in this barn one night, on their way to a new life. The next morning, lying in each other's arms, they talk about the new life they'll set up for themselves, having a family, just taking it easy.

When Rodrigo steps out of the barn, he finds himself confronted by hordes of troops who want to follow him. They say he can't step down yet. Spain needs him. Yada yada yada. As you might imagine, after the night he just had, the last thing Rodrigo wants to do is get back into the military arena. But he's got all these people depending on him. So he reluctantly decides to take charge again. Jimena, meanwhile, goes back to that nunnery. This time, she's pregnant.

The years pass. El Cid has become older, grayer, bearded, and just as legendary as ever. Ben Yussef, still clad head to toe in black scarves and whatnot, has decided it's time to make landfall in Valencia, the southern most region in Spain. Valencia's already in Moorish hands, so he should be in like Flint. From there, he can sweep up Spain and make it a 100% Muslim theocracy.

Uh, I don't think so. El Cid's got other plans. First, he goes to that convent to pick up his wife Jimena, whom he hasn't seen in years. In that time she's given birth to their twin daughters, who are now five or so. So Jimena and the girls accompany El Cid and his Christian-Moorish army down to Valencia. He makes short work of the emir in charge there and takes up residence in the castle. Ben Yussef is determined, though. The stage is set for a final climactic battle on the beaches of Valencia.

That might seem like a detailed synopsis to you, but believe me, it doesn't come within a light year of doing justice to the epic scale of this film. When I heard that this picture only garnered three Oscar nominations, and didn't win any of them, I was a drop jawed. Okay, maybe it's a bit long at the end. A good 20 minutes or so could've been lopped off the Valencia sequence. But still, most of the films that win awards today don't hold a candle to El Cid.

When he introduced the screening, L.A. Times critic Pete Hammond said El Cid was the victim of terrible timing. Released in December of 1961, it had to go toe to toe with two other Academy-baiting juggernauts: West Side Story and Judgment at Nuremberg. The latter ended up winning Best Actor for Maximilian Schell and Best Screenplay Adaptation for Abby Man. But really, this Oscar season belonged to West Side Story. The thing racked up 10 trophies, including Best Picture and Best Director, both of which went to Robert Wise. Can anyone say sweep? What was lemon juice in El Cid's wound was that its leading lady, Sophia Loren, won Best Actress....but not for El Cid. That same year she played the lead in, and won the trophy for, a flick called Two Women. The three nominations for El Cid were Best Art Direction, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song for "Love Theme from El Cid (The Falcon and the Dove)". The latter two were both nominations for the Hungarian composer Miklos Rozsa. Like I said, though, it won none of those. The Art Direction prize went to--can you guess?--West Side Story. Both the Best Original Score and Best Original Song prizes went to Breakfast at Tiffany's. Henry Mancini collected both of those. The original song was "Moon River". Boy, what a time to be a movie fan, eh?

Pete also shared a bit of backstory gossip before the movie started which sort of made the movie unintentionally funny at times. During the filming of El Cid, Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren didn't get along. Well, I mean they got along for the most part. It's just that Charlton wasn't very committed to doing those romantic scenes. He'd go through the motions and everything, but he wouldn't put his heart into it. Naturally Sophia took it personally, as if he was implying something was wrong with her. Even weirder, Charlton would oftentimes not make eye contact with her during those same scenes. And again, Sophia couldn't figure out why. Was something wrong with her? "She was tearing her hair out," Pete said, trying to figure out what Charlton's deal was. In his memoir many years later, Charlton said the reason he was looking past Sophia instead of at Sophia was because he was looking toward the future. Huh? Was he foreseeing Soylent Green or something?

And the last thing Pete talked about before the lights went down was the writing, something of obvious interest to me. Bottom line? The two writers who got credit for writing El Cid didn't actually write the script that ended up being used. Fred Frank and Phil Yordan wrote this script about El Cid, right? Producer Sam Bronston and director Anthony Mann liked it enough all right, but Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren didn't like it at all. And so Sam Bronston made a decision somewhat radical for the time: He brought in a writer who'd been blacklisted to help with revisions. The writer's name was Ben Barzman. Sam didn't hire Ben because he disagreed with the blacklisting or because he was trying to stick it to the Man or anything. His son Bill, who was one of the talkers after the screening, couldn't emphasize enough how apolitical his dad was. Sam Bronston was an opportunist, pure and simple. When he had a goal, he'd bend every fiber of his will toward achieving that goal. So he hired Ben Barzman for no other reason than for his writing talent. When Ben came aboard, you know what he did? He took Fred and Phil's draft, chucked it into the wastebasket, and started all over from page one, line one, FADE IN. And so it was Ben Barzman's script that convinced Charlton and Sophia to do it, but Ben never got the credit for it. No, really, to this day that's the case. If and when you watch the movie, you'll see in the credits that Fred and Phil wrote the script, but now you know better.

Ben Barzman's widow was actually at last night's screening, but she bolted as soon as it was over. Too bad, as I would've loved to hear what she had to say about her late hubby's secret involvement and what he thought about never getting official credit for writing this masterpiece. As it was, we still had four peeps talk to us afterward. Pete Hammond stayed in his seat and let Bill Bronston handle the moderating as folks in the audience posed questions to him as well as to Nina Mann, Juliet Rozsa, and Mel Martin.

Here's an interesting fact about Bill Bronston: Besides being Sam's son, he's the great nephew of Leon Trotsky. And I tell you, he's doing a great job carrying his great uncle's political torch. Bill admitted he's an extreme leftist. In general he's very much an idealist. While still a med student in the sixties, he was already advocating universal healthcare. The Governator actually just tried to pass a universal healthcare bill, but the state legislature rejected it. Personally I couldn't disagree more with Communism as a viable economic policy, but I still thought Bill was a great speaker. His voice was very soft, almost soothing, and he was always sure to make eye contact with everyone in the audience. There was a director's chair set up for him next to the other three guests, but I'm pretty sure he never used it. He stood with his mic cradled in both hands a few feet in front of the chairs, and a little to the side too when one of the other guests was answering a question.

Bill sounds like he's the exact opposite of his father. The way both Bill and Mel Martin told it, Sam Bronston was a red-, white-, and blue-blooded capitalist. He had no interest in politics at all and just had this insatiable thirst to produce great grand epic films no matter the cost, especially to him. And believe me, it did come at quite a bit of cost. What he'd do, right? He'd sell the distribution rights before even making the movie, and then use that money to cover production costs. He also borrowed tons of money and sunk himself into enormous debt. His empire rose and fell in a relatively short amount of time, but did he make the most of it or what. Dude churned out six films of mostly an epic nature in seven years. Seven years! I mean, it took Paul Thomas Anderson five years just to make There Will Be Blood. In seven measly years, Sam churned out stuff like John Paul Jones, King of Kings, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and Circus World. Good God, man. Bill was going through high school and college at this time, and it's no wonder he never got to see Dad.

El Cid cost seven million dollars to make, not a sum to look down your nose at in '61. Of that amount, one mil went to Sophia Loren, $800k to Charlton, $200k to Sam, and the remaining five mil spread out to everyone else. Seeing as how Sam literally used a cast of thousands for those huge battle scenes, and shot this whole thing on location in Spain (read: the cast and crew needed hotel accommodations for months), that five million must've been spread beyond thin.

Besides paying the people, Sam needed money for no less than shitloads of film stock. If the final cut checked in at three hours, how long do you think the rough cut was? Let me tell you what I mean. Early in the film, El Cid has a jousting contest. It's only ten minutes long or so, let's say a thousand feet of film. You know how many feet of film they used to shoot it? That one measly scene? One hundred...thousand. Yes, you read that right. The number one followed by five zeroes. For what turned out to be ten minutes in a 180-minute film. God bless the editor, that's all I've got to say.

Here's the deal with Sam and Spain. Before El Cid, Sam produced John Paul Jones and King of Kings. Both were filmed entirely in Spain. While the Spanish government was grateful for Sam's injecting all that dough into the economy, they wondered if he'd ever make a movie that was actually about Spain. So that's when he went shopping around for ideas and eventually came across Fred Frank's story treatment for an epic about El Cid. Why film in Spain at all, you ask? I mean it is a good question. At the time Spain was still a fascist state ruled by General Franco. And now here was Sam making El Cid, a movie written by a Communist. Again, Sam was apolitical. He couldn't've cared less if the Easter Bunny was ruling Spain. The reason he made his films there was that it was cheaper, plain and simple.

Still, these films were epic, and much money was needed. Thank God Sam could turn on the charm or else, even with pre-selling distribution rights, he still wouldn't've had enough. He needed investors. One of the investors he charmed the dough out of was none other than Pierre Du Pont of the Du Pont chemical company. Pierre turned out to be instrumental not only to Sam's rise but also to Sam's fall. You see, El Cid was enormously successful, perhaps not with the Academy, but certainly at the box office. It made a fortune. Unfortunately, it was the last of Sam's films to do so. The three films he made afterward all flopped. What's worse, he walked away and left Pierre to handle the monster debt the flops left in their wake. Understandably pissed off beyond measure, Pierre made it his mission in life to make sure Sam never made another movie again. Suffice it to say his mission went off without a hitch.

And so Sam Bronston's life ended on a terribly depressing note. His golden years saw him dirt poor and living in section eight housing in Houston. Then he came down with Alzheimer's. Poor Bill had to put his medical career on hold to take care of Dad until he passed away at the age of 85, just after New Year's 1994.

Mel Martin expanded on the whole Charlton-butting-heads-with-Sophia deal. First of all, Charlton had been fairly adept thus far in his career at alienating his leading ladies. He didn't treat them horribly or anything, but similar to the way he resisted establishing any chemistry with Sophia, he didn't treat them with much respect. Bill piped in at one point to talk about the makeup jobs in El Cid, or lack thereof in Sophia's case, which only exacerbated the rift between the two. When you see the film, you'll notice that Charlton's made up to look older as time passes. The real El Cid was in his fifties when he died, and that's pretty much how Charlton looks during the last hour or so, when he's in Valencia. Sophia Loren, in stark contrast, looks angelic and gorgeous all the way through the film. Charlton resented that, Bill said.

Mel also talked about how Charlton's dislike of Sophia not only influenced the course of Sam Bronston's future projects but also indirectly illustrated the lengths to which Sam went to produce his epics. With El Cid in the can, Sam wanted his next opus to be The Fall of the Roman Empire, and he wanted Charlton and Sophia in the lead roles of Livius and Lucilla. He assumed he'd get the two of them again and so proceeded to have the entire Roman Forum set built to scale. I mean that literally. Sam spared no expense to have the entire Forum reproduced exactly as it had been in antiquity. By the time the set was finished, after months of hard labor, Sam got word that Charlton had no desire to work with Sophia again, but he was interested in starring in another of Sam's projects still in development: 55 Days at Peking. So you know what Sam did? To appease Charlton? He had that entire Roman Forum set torn down, and in its place had built an exact replica of the Forbidden City. No, really, and to scale too, just as he'd done with the Forum. Amazing, isn't it? Dude let nothing stop him. 55 Days at Peking, by the way, is about the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 China. For his female lead this time, Charlton got to work with Ava Gardner. Poor devil. Sophia Loren. Ava Gardner. How did he ever survive? Oh, and for the character of Livius in The Fall of the Roman Empire, Sam went to Stephen Boyd, who'd played Charlton's childhood friend and adult rival a few years earlier in Ben-Hur.

Someone in the audience (I think it was Pete Hammond from the Times, or at least someone in his party) wondered why The Fall of the Roman Empire was a commercial failure. He couldn't rave enough about the performances of Christopher Plummer as Commodus and Alec Guinness as Marcus Aurelius, and how they were far superior to Joaquin Phoenix and Richard Harris, who played those same two characters in Gladiator. That film, of course, was hugely popular both commercially and critically. Do you remember how it swept the Oscars? It scored five trophies, and another seven nominations, including one for Joaquin. Bill said that, in his opinion, The Fall of the Roman Empire was too political and preachy. It forgot about the golden rule of just telling the story, and letting any message within the story come out organically. It was especially disheartening to Bill because he'd seen a rough cut of the film with his dad, and he loved it. There were all kinds of great scenes that actually told the story and weren't trying to shove the movie's obvious message down your throat. And then, when the final cut was released, all of those scenes were gone. Bill said he was being literal. Each and every one of his favorite scenes, the scenes that had emotion and that just told the story, was gone, edited out.

Talk eventually turned to El Cid director Anthony Mann. His daughter Nina, who looked to be in her fifties or so, had fond memories of going to Spain with Dad to scout locations for El Cid. It was just the two of them in a Jeep or something, driving all over the Spanish countryside to look at castles and whatnot. Those castles you see in the film, by the way, are real castles. Sam may have been nutty about reproducing the Forum and the Forbidden City, but he wouldn't build ginormous sets if he could use the real thing.

Mel cited Anthony Mann as a great example of how your fortunes can change for the better when you least expect it, when you're at your absolute nadir. You see, before Stanley Kubrick was hired to direct Spartacus, Anthony Mann was supposed to direct it. He lasted all of two weeks. According to Mel, he wanted Spartacus to be a three-dimensional character. You know, a real person and not just some Rambo fighter guy with loin cloths and cans of whoop-ass. Well, that latter version was exactly what Kirk Douglas wanted. And it was Kirk who got his way. Just to show you that things happen for a reason, though, being fired from Spartacus meant Anthony could now direct Cimarron with Glenn Ford and Maria Schell. And then that led to El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire. The latter film didn't make much money, as I've said, but it was a healthy paycheck for Anthony. Already in his late fifties at that point, with dozens of films on his resume, Anthony only made two more films after Roman Empire before he passed away at age 60.

And finally Juliet Rozsa got to talk about her father, the brilliant Hungarian composer Dr. Miklos Rozsa. Like Nina, Juliet got to go to Spain with her dad. They went well before the start of production, as her dad wanted to dive into researching just what kind of music Spaniards listened to during the 11th century. Then, when actually composing the score, Dad would sit at the piano for hours at a stretch, experimenting with various melodies that would be flavored with an 11th century Spanish style (whatever that means). Juliet said that both she and her brother entertained the idea of following in Dad's footsteps, but Miklos was just too demanding, not to speak of intimidating. Seriously, if you haven't heard of Dr. Rozsa, you should know that the man was sort of already considered a genius during his lifetime. So anyway, Juliet and her bro eventually said forget it, they wouldn't even bother pursuing musical careers. However, she did say that both of her daughters play music professionally. I think one or both play the violin. It's easier for them since their pop-pop isn't around to lay down the law.

It was midnight when the whole program was finished. Mind you, the sell-out crowd was seated by seven. Sure, I was pooped, and getting up before dawn as I do, I knew today would be a long day. Still, this turned out to be an exceptional treat. The ArcLight hadn't advertised these in-person guests, and I had no idea El Cid was only just now coming out on DVD. I'd always meant to throw it onto my Netflix queue, but as with who knows how many other classics, I just hadn't gotten around to it (not that it would have mattered). I go through my Netflix DVDs like water (I'm on the four-disc plan), but I tend to be kind of picky about which DVDs I'll actually buy. I have to be convinced that I'll want to take it out and watch it now and again, no matter how many times I've already seen it. Don't you know that El Cid now falls into that category. Forget putting it on my queue. If last night's event was supposed to convince me to go out and buy the thing, I'm afraid it worked and then some.

At the Movies with Governor Tom: Blazing Saddles and History of the World: Part I

When Mel Brooks was a wee tot growing up in Brooklyn, he had an uncle named Joe who drove a cab. The thing about Joe, right? He was a tiny man. Mel said that if you saw a cab coming your way, and no one was at the wheel? That was Joe. Anyway, Uncle Joe was pals with this doorman in Manhattan named Al. One time, when Mel was nine or so, Al told Uncle Joe that he had two tickets to Anything Goes that he couldn't use. Anything Goes had premiered at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway the year earlier and was still going strong. It starred Ethel Merman in the lead as Reno Sweeney. Uncle Joe gladly unburdened Al of his tickets and invited his little nephew Melvin to go with him. The seats were in the last row of the second balcony, but still, according to Mel, Ethel Merman was a bit too loud. Seeing this musical pretty much determined Mel's career path. From that moment on, he knew he wanted to be in show biz.

Now how do I know that, you might ask? Well how else? Mel told me. Okay fine. He didn't tell me personally. He told all of us sitting in the audience during his Q&A. That's right, kids. I saw Mel Brooks in person! THE Mel Brooks. Comedy legend Mel Brooks. In person. You don't understand, I grew up watching a good share of this guy's resume: Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, History of the World: Part I, Spaceballs. When Spaceballs was on cable regularly in the late eighties, I probably saw it about half a million times or so. The first Mel film I saw, however, was History of the World: Part I. My brothers and I rented it sometime in the mid eighties and watched it like it was going out of style. Plus, again, HBO had it on a lot. That was my introduction to Mel. When I heard that Mel himself, just north of eighty years old God bless 'im, was appearing in person last night, I couldn't resist. What was gravy was that it was in honor of this double feature of what are, in my humble opinion, his finest gems: Blazing Saddles and History of the World: Part I. Actually, it was one of three appearances he's making during this five-day Mel festival at the Aero, with two films per day. Sure, I'd love to go see all ten films, but there's this little thing that gets in the way. It's called life. When I saw this event scheduled a few weeks ago, I decided I had to go on one of the nights when he was going to be there. And of those three nights, there simply was no better choice than this one. Come on now. Blazing Saddles AND History of the World: Part I? In the same night? With Mel in person? As Grant, the guy who always introduces screenings at the Aero and conducts the Q&As most of the time, said last night, if the sign outside said "Aero Hotel and Casino," our tickets would've cost $500. As it was, it only cost $10. Again, quoting Grant: "Highway robbery!"

First, they showed Blazing Saddles, right? Then Mel came up, and Grant interviewed him and all that. And then you know what Mel did? He stayed and watched History of the World: Part I with us. Can you imagine? This film had been my Mel initiation. And now I've seen it. With Mel! I don't mean to go all googly-eyed on you, but how ridiculous and wonderful can you get? It'd be like you were a U2 fan or something. And Bono and all the guys came over and listened to one of their albums with you and then talked about it afterward. Are you getting what I'm saying?

Before I get to the Q&A, let me talk a little about the films. Blazing Saddles takes place in New Mexico or some such southwestern place in the 1870s. The brilliant Harvey Korman, a regular on The Carol Burnett Show at this time, plays the shamelessly corrupt state attorney general named Hedley Lamarr. No one gets his name right, though. They call him Hedy Lamarr. Get it? No? Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian actress whose heyday was a bit before your time then. Anyway, whether you got it or not, his being called Hedy frustrates him to no end. Poor Hedy--I mean, Hedley--wants land. He's trying to grab enough land to allow a railroad to run through his state. Only problem is, the railroad would have to run straight through this one town called Rock Ridge (where everyone's last name is Johnson). Hedy--sorry, Hedley--needs to find a way to scare everyone out of town so he can get the railroad through there. How does he plan to do it? He takes one of the railroad workers, a black guy named Bart (Black Bart, get it? Oh come on, you must get that one!), and makes him the new sheriff. Never in the history of those United States had there ever been a black sheriff. This is back when they use the evil N word as casually as you and I use the word Starbucks. So Black Bart becomes the new sheriff. Hedy Lamarr of course hopes the people of Rock Ridge would rather run away than live under a black sheriff. If it were a perfect world, they'd kill Bart first, then abandon the town.

Neither happens. Hedy Lamarr apparently forgot that the notorious gunslinger known as the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder, awesome as always), who's killed more people than Cecil B. DeMille, is still being held prisoner in the Rock Ridge jail cell inside the sheriff's office. Black Bart, a "sophisticated urbanite," strikes up a fast friendship with the Waco Kid. Together, the two of them find a way to escape Hedy Lamarr's machinations. Not only that, but the townsfolk soon come to like their new sheriff. That's right, kids. Poor Hedy Lamarr, while simply trying to evacuate Rock Ridge so he can profit from the expanding railroad, ends up opening a can of nightcrawlers. The whole thing blows up in his face. But how does it blow up? Ah, that's where I'll leave it to you to watch this priceless picture.

History of the World: Part I, about 90 minutes like Blazing Saddles, isn't one feature-length story but a series of sketches taking place during certain time periods, some sketches much longer than others. Like Blazing Saddles, though, a lot of the humor comes from blatant anachronisms. For instance, upon being asked for a last request, the prisoner says, "Novacaine." The executioner's like, "There's no such thing known to medical science," and then the prisoner's like, "I'll wait."

First you've got the dawn of man, featuring a hilarious series of mini-sketches that show how man discovered singing and what have you (hint: it involves slamming people's feet with rocks). The main caveman in that is played by Sid Caesar. Does the name at least sound familiar to you? He was huge back in the fifties and sixties. In the fifties he had this comedy sketch show called Your Show of Shows. Guess who one of the writers on the show was? Mel to the Brooks. Mel wasn't even 30 yet. Landing that gig provided a huge boost to his career. In addition to Sid, Imogene Coca and Carl Reiner were two of the show's regulars. Anyway, so Sid went on to star in two of Mel's films, this one as well as Silent Movie five years earlier (Mel's follow-up to Blazing Saddles).

So anyway, after the dawn of man, you've got Mel playing Moses carrying fifteen commandments on three tablets. One of them breaks, and that's why we have ten commandments to this day. And then there's the Roman Empire, the Last Supper, the Inquisition, and finally the French Revolution. The Inquisition segment is really just this one musical number. After hearing his Anything Goes story, it's perfectly obvious watching the Inquisition bit how much the man loves musicals. He wrote the lyrics, as he'd eventually do for the stage musical adaptations of The Producers and Young Frankenstein.

If you're seeing History of the World right after Blazing Saddles, you'll recognize some of the actors. There's Dom DeLuise playing Emperor Nero. And Madeline Kahn plays his wife, Empress Nympho. And once again you've got Harvey Korman playing a guy whose name no one can get straight. This time he's Count de Monet, but everyone calls him Count de Money. One special guest star you've got in this flick is Englishman John Hurt. The year before this was made, Mel Brooks produced The Elephant Man under his production company at Fox, Brooksfilm. It was directed by David Lynch and starred John Hurt as John Merrick, a.k.a. the Elephant Man. Anthony Hopkins played his doctor. They must've liked working together because Mel got John to cameo in History of the World as Jesus during the Last Supper bit. Mel's character from the Roman Empire segment, Comicus, is their waiter. A few years later John Hurt showed up briefly in Mel's Spaceballs playing the same guy he played in Alien, the one with the alien bursting from his chest. "Oh no," he says in Spaceballs. "Not again!"

Since the Q&A immediately followed Blazing Saddles, Mel mostly talked about that. One day in the early seventies, when he was strolling the streets of New York, he heard a voice behind him say, "Need some change?" Mel turned and saw one of his writer friends who happened to be out for a stroll himself. This guy told Mel about this other writer Mel had never met before named Andrew Bergman. Turned out Andrew had an outline for a movie idea called Tex Ex, a comedy Western. Perhaps Mel would take a look at it and maybe help the guy bring it to the big screen. At first Mel was less than thrilled. Last night he said his response was: "I'm a New York Jew. What the hell am I going to do with a Western?" Just to humor his friend, though, Mel went to Andrew and took a look at the outline. He loved it and thought it had a lot of potential. So he and Andrew started writing the script together.

Let me tell you a little something about Andrew. At this time, he was in his late twenties, a full 20 years younger than Mel. He was an aspiring writer from Queens who hadn't published or produced a single word, but thanks to that one friend introducing him to Mel, that was about to change. He's had a fairly steady writing career since. After Blazing Saddles, he created the ill-fated TV spinoff of Blazing Saddles, called Black Bart, which had Louis Gossett Jr. playing Bart. Andrew also penned the scripts for The In-Laws, Oh, God! You Devil, Fletch, The Freshman, Soapdish, and Honeymoon in Vegas. For his first writing credit, though, he would have to share the credit not only with Mel but with three others.

During the early seventies, Mel was a lunchtime regular at Chock Full O' Nuts. Often, he said, he'd be in there to grab a bite when this attorney friend of his, Norman Steinberg, would show up and bug him about helping him get into the writing biz. According to Mel, Norman's signature line would be, "I'm a lawyer, but I want to be a writer. I'm a lawyer, but I want to be a writer." And he'd just hammer Mel with that refrain. Finally Mel relented and invited Norman to help him with what was still called Tex Ex. Norman joining the team meant another guy joining up, a dentist friend of Norman's named Alan Uger. Alan worked with them only temporarily before, as Mel said last night, he had to go "fill cavities." Still, Alan did contribute enough material to the screenplay to get equal writing credit with Mel, Andrew, Norman...and the fifth recruit.

This was none other than Richard Pryor, who of course would go on to become a comedy legend himself. At this time he was in his early thirties and had already been working steadily as both an actor and a writer for about a decade. His writing credits at this point included two episodes of Sanford & Son and some other TV stuff. Among his acting credits were guest-starring stints on shows like The Mod Squad and The Partridge Family. The most notable work by far that he'd done as an actor at that point was Piano Man in Lady Sings the Blues. This was about two years before Blazing Saddles. You ever see that? It's Diana Ross playing Billie Holiday. Check it out, it's good stuff. That really helped get his acting career on track. In fact, Mel really wanted Richard to play Bart in Blazing Saddles, but the suits at Warner Brothers, especially the head guy there, Ted Ashley, thought Richard's drug habit made him too much of a liability. Mel had already known Richard for a good while at this point from the New York comedy club circuit. They got along famously, which made Richard a natural fit for Mel's writing team. Last night Mel said the gravy of having Richard on board was that they could actually get away with things like the evil N word and black characters who were blatant stereotypes. Of course, as far as the Bart character goes, Richard drew him completely against type. But Richard contributed more than all that to the script. For example, remember Mongo? Richard wrote all his dialogue. And then after Blazing Saddles, he started focusing more on his acting. In short order he did both Car Wash and Silver Streak. His movie career was on track. Although we probably shouldn't talk about Superman III.

As for Cleavon Little, the man who ended up playing Black Bart, Mel couldn't say enough about how much he grew to admire him. When directing, Mel makes it a point not to eat lunch with his actors. 'Cause, you know, if you eat lunch with one actor, the rest of the cast might view that actor as being an ass kisser or whatever. Then that could lead to in-fighting and all that nonsense. So Mel typically avoids lunching with the cast. With Cleavon, though, it was different. He actually asked Cleavon if they could sit at the same table in the Warners cafeteria. If you've never heard of Cleavon Little, that's because movies weren't really his thing. Blazing Saddles was probably the highest profile film on his resume. His main thing was theater. He attended Julliard on a full scholarship, did Shakespeare, won a Tony, all that stuff. Cleavon also logged tons of TV guest spots. And then, sadly, he became another great talent gone before his time. He passed away of colon cancer about fifteen years ago, at age 53. Mel even choked up a little last night when remembering Cleavon.

One of his funnier Blazing anectdotes concerned the test screenings at Warners. In fact, no sooner did he come up after the film than someone in the audience shouted out, "How did you get away with it?!" First of all, Mel couldn't emphasize enough how he and the other four writers never believed for a second their script would ever get made. He kept warning Andrew Bergman, who came up with the idea, that a snowball had a better chance of surviving a brush fire than their script had to get produced. Because of this view that they had nothing to lose, Mel said they just went balls to the wall with the humor. Mel's skepticism during the writing process didn't have anything to do at all with Andrew's outline, by the way. He loved the idea. But at this point in his career, Mel had only directed two films, and neither made much money. He said that his first film, The Producers, only played in a handful of cities. His second film, Twelve Chairs, made, as he put it, "Thirty-six cents." So here he was, pushing 50 and figuring no one would ever let him make a movie again, and certainly not a Western satire.

But son of a bitch, Warners did let them make it, but they greenlighted it before Mel et al had a final draft of the script. It wasn't until after the film was shot that Warners head honcho Ted Ashley realized what he'd gotten himself into. It was hilarious, what happened at the test screening. As Mel described it, the first test screening was with all the top brass at Warners, including Ted Ashley. When the movie was over, Ted took Mel into another room and gave him no less than two dozen or so changes to make. Mel wrote them all down as Ted spoke. First, you can't show a guy punching out a horse. And you can't have a scene with people farting. And for God's sake, Mel, you can't have anyone saying the evil N word. You know, stuff like that. So Mel thanked Ted for his valuable feedback. Then, right after Ted left the room, he tore up the sheet of paper and didn't change a thing. Soon after, they had a test screening for all the peons of Warner Brothers, the administrative staff and what have you. The first scene in the film, right? You've got that chain gang of blacks and Asians working on the railroad. One of the Asians passes out because of the heat, and the head guard's like, "Dock that chink a day's pay for napping." Mel said that's when everyone in the audience laughed their asses off, and he knew this test screening was going to go over much better than the suits' screening.

Still, the executives didn't know what to make of it. Mel said it may never have reached a theater near you if it hadn't been for a suit at Warners named John Calley. He was different from Ted and the others in that he had a shred of foresight. He could see that this film was going to be a smash, and might even get some awards attention. He convinced Ted to release it without any of those changes. John Calley, by the way, eventually left Warners and became the head honcho at Sony Pictures. A few years ago he left Sony and now produces films with his own production company. Recent credits include Closer, The Da Vinci Code, The Jane Austin Book Club, and the upcoming Da Vinci prequel Angels & Demons.

So thank John Calley for Blazing Saddles. I obviously don't need to tell you how extremely popular the film was, and still is, judging by last night's sellout crowd. Did you know that Blazing Saddles was the first film to show farting onscreen? Weird, huh? Comedies these days have become so raunchy that we take scatological humor for granted. In addition to turning a profit, it also racked up three Oscar nominations. One was for Best Song for the title song "Blazing Saddles." Guess who wrote the lyrics for that. You know it: Melvin Brooks. Madeline Kahn scored a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

Oh yeah. Madeline "Wrath of" Kahn. Mel talked about her a bit. Her Blazing character, Lili Von Shtupp (a.k.a. the Teutonic Titwillow), was a direct riff on Marlene Dietrich from the 1939 flick Destry Rides Again. That song "I'm Tired" that she sings when Bart and the Waco Kid see her for the first time was a riff on Marlene's singing "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)". Mel expressed some regret that a lot of her scenes with Cleavon Little had to be edited out because they weren't exactly germane to the story. You see, in order to get rid of Black Bart, Hedy Lamarr hires Lili Von Shtupp to seduce Bart and lure him into a trap. Instead, Bart turns out to be great in the sack, and Lili falls for him and joins his cause against Hedy. So at least a few of their scenes together survived. Madeline Kahn was just awesome, wasn't she? Of course you should see her in all the Mel stuff she did, but don't forget to check out Judy Berlin, her very last picture. With Edie Falco in the title role, it came out the same year Madeline passed away. As with Cleavon, it was cancer that got her.

Speaking of Mel Brooks regulars, Rudy De Luca was at the screening last night. He didn't come up and talk, but Mel did make him stand up and take a bow at one point. He was sitting way in the back, where Mel went to sit after the Q&A to watch History of the World: Part I with us. Like Harvey Korman, Rudy cut his comedy teeth on The Carol Burnett Show, only he worked on the show as a writer. He also did writing stints for The Tim Conway Show before Mel came calling. Tim Conway, by the way, was another regular for Carol Burnett. He and Harvey Korman did some of the best skits together. Seriously. I'm sure you could find them on YouTube. They were a riot. So anyway, in the seventies Rudy hooked up with Mel and ever since has done lots of stuff with him. He co-wrote Silent Movie, High Anxiety, Life Stinks, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. He also had supporting roles in just about all of those flicks as well as Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. In History of the World he plays Captain Mucus.

Someone up front asked Mel what makes a good comedian. Mel said he had no idea, that it was much too broad a question. He said you could understand how difficult a question that is when you think about the sheer diversity of comedians over the decades. How do you get from Charlie Chaplin to Ben Stiller? Both are very successful comedians but are so different from each other. One thing that always helps, Mel said, is to be a die hard fan of comedy. You gotta love it if you're gonna do it.

This led him to reminisce for a few minutes about Johnny Carson. Mel loved Johnny, loved being on his show. In fact, here's a nice bit of trivia. Did you know that Mel Brooks was one of the guests on the very first episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson? The Tonight Show had been around since the fifties, but Johnny didn't take over as host until October 1, 1962. On that night the guests included Tony Bennett, Joan Crawford, Groucho Marx...and a thirty-six-year-old unknown "New York Jew" named Mel Brooks. Cool, huh? Mel was a guest on Johnny's show another four times over the next 30 or so years. He talked about one time when Johnny didn't like his tie and sort of on the spur of the moment reached over and cut it off at the stem with a pair of scissors. Mel returned the favor, and for the rest of the interview the two of them continued bantering as if wearing a severed tie were a perfectly normal thing. Mel said that Jay Leno was doing all right, but Letterman was too weird. He's never been on The Late Show because he doesn't feel comfortable watching it. Dave, in Mel's opinion, tries too hard to be funny.

The only History of the World question I remember was about Barry Levinson's cameo as the column salesman in the Roman Forum ("Columns, columns! Get your columns here! Ionic, Doric, Corinthian! Put a few columns in front, turn any hovel into a showplace! Columns...! Sir, don't touch the merchandise. All right now, columns, columns!"). If you've heard of Barry at all, it's no doubt as a director. Originally from Baltimore, his directorial debut was Diner, which he made the year after History of the World. Other Baltimore films he did include Tin Men, Avalon, and Liberty Heights. He's also directed a lot of great non-Baltimore stuff like The Natural, Good Morning, Vietnam, Rain Man (for which he won an Oscar), and lots more. He was also one of the brains behind Homicide: Life on the Street, the one-hour Baltimore-set crime drama from the nineties. What a lot of people don't know, however, is that, like Rudy de Luca, Barry Levinson came of age as a writer on The Carol Burnett Show and The Tim Conway Show. He also helped write two of Mel's earlier flicks, Silent Movie and High Anxiety. Mel had nothing but nice things to say about Barry, and he's glad he got to work with him when he did. Because as you can tell, as soon as he made Diner, Barry's career blasted off into the stratosphere.

Barry is just one more example of the level of talent Mel's been attracting throughout his career, even if it's for a cameo. That speaks volumes about his character. After seeing him last night, it's obvious that he's very much salt of the earth with his heart on his sleeve. I'm guessing it's a piece of cake to work for him because if he had a problem with you, he'd just tell you point blank instead of leave you guessing, and he'd somehow still make you laugh. More than that, though, he'd no doubt push you to succeed by pointing to himself as an example of improbable success. Yeah, Mel's definitely one of those guys who would say, "Hey, if I can do this. You can too."

At the Movies with Governor Tom: A Clockwork Orange

Tonight at the ArcLight Hollywood I caught a showing of the 1971 picture A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Malcolm McDowell and all of his droogs. Now why would a first-run house like the ArcLight be showing Clockwork? Same reason they showed Metropolis last week. If you haven't read my Metropolis post, you'll see that both that flick as well as this one were shown as part of a music festival put on by the Los Angeles Philharmonic called Concrete Frequency. Concrete Frequency is, as the brochure puts it, a "multi-disciplinary series of events designed to examine and celebrate the elements that define a city, and how they are affected by, and reflected in, music." Most of this constituted concerts at Disney Hall, the L.A. Phil's home base, but they also had three films tying into it at the ArcLight: Metropolis, Taxi Driver, and A Clockwork Orange. Since I saw Taxi Driver on the big screen a couple years ago, I opted to skip it so I could see Callie Khouri in person for a sneak preview of Mad Money.

As with Metropolis, A Clockwork Orange was followed by a Q&A with Variety film critic Jon Burlingame. This time he interviewed English documentarian Nick Redman. Nick's significance to this event was that he was the one to interview Malcolm McDowell on the commentary track of the A Clockwork Orange DVD. His other credentials include a lot of documentaries about Westerns. For the John Ford DVD set Ford at Fox, he did a documentary called Becoming John Ford. Back in the nineties he did another Ford doc called A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers. He's also done a few pieces about Sam Peckinpah. Back in 1996 he scored on Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary, Short Subjects category for The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage. Since then he's done A Simple Adventure Story: Sam Peckinpah, Mexico and The Wild Bunch and Main Title 1M1: Jerry Fielding, Sam Peckinpah and The Getaway.

When he made A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick was in his forties. Most of his work was behind him, stuff like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spartacus, Lolita, and tons more. After Clockwork he made all of four films in the 28 years before he died: Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. Do you know what A Clockwork Orange is about? If you've seen this mind trip, the answer wouldn't necessarily be yes. Those English accents can be quite thick from a Yank's point of view. Even though it stretches north of two hours, though, the story's fairly straightforward. It takes place in near-future England. Malcolm McDowell plays a chap called de Large, Alex de Large. We first meet him at a milkbar during the film's very memorable beginning. He's not alone. You see, Alex is the head of a gang. The other three in the gang are called his droogs. Their names are Dim, Georgie, and Pete. They don't really do much except, as Alex says in the narration, indulge in a little bit of the old ultraviolence.

After we watch them in action for a bit and get introduced to Alex's home life--he lives with Mum and Dad, who have no idea what he's up to--Alex and his droogs have a bit of a falling out. The end of the first act sees them ambush Alex at the Catlady's house and leave him for the police. He gets caught and does a two-year stint in jail. The only reason he gets out that soon is because he submits himself as a guinea pig in some government experiment designed to reform ultraviolent criminals. I won't spill where the film goes from there, but suffice it to say that Alex finds himself pushed and pulled both by the government and by some resistance group trying to expose the government as criminal. In typical Stanley Kubrick fashion, the ending isn't satisfying in the mainstream three-act Hollywood sense, but somehow it fits perfectly with the rest of the film.

But you already know about Stanley Kubrick. If you've seen even one of the films I mentioned above, especially the later ones, you know that you'll always get something different and that it may not go down so smoothly the first time. So enough about Stan. Do you know anything about Anthony Burgess? The Manchester native who wrote the novel on which the film was based? Now there was an interesting chap. By the time he penned A Clockwork Orange in '62, he was already in his mid forties. Nick Redman described him as "a newspaper critic and eccentric," but he was more than that. He didn't even turn to writing until his early forties, after teaching stints in Malaysia and Borneo. Yeah, he was on the weird side. He said things like "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone." When asked to describe his writing methodology, he said, "I start at the beginning, go to the end, then stop." But he had the most depressing childhood that the fact he could keep it together at all is a real testament to the man's mental stamina. Both his ma and his sister died during the 1918 flu pandemic, when Anthony was all of a year old. As for Dad? He was mostly an absentee drunk. Anthony, in other words, had a Grade A shitty upbringing. Then along came World War II.

It was an incident during the war, in fact, that planted the seed in Anthony's brain to write A Clockwork Orange nearly 20 years later. During a blackout in London, U.S. Army deserters mugged and beat up his wife. Remember that scene in Clockwork when Alex and his droogs just walk into that writer's house, and Alex rapes his wife right in front of him while singing "Singin' in the Rain"? Apparently that scene was "inspired" by Anthony's wife's assault, and then he wrote the rest of the novel around that scene. Another interesting little tidbit about the novel is that, while he was writing it, Anthony was convinced he was dying of a brain tumor. He churned through the sucker in a hurry so it could be published and earn his wife enough dough after he kicked the bucket. After he finished it, though, he found out that his noodle was fit as a fiddle.

Now in case you're wondering who to blame for those thick accents, don't blame Anthony, or Stan, or the English. Blame the Russians. Sometime before he wrote A Clockwork Orange, Anthony and his wife took a cruise to St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad). A lover--and quick learner--of languages, Anthony used the Russian he learned on that trip to create a sort of Anglo-Russian dialect for the novel, and by extension the movie. That's why it's so damned difficult to discern what in hell Alex is saying sometimes. He and his droogs are talking in a slang that's sort of English and sort of Russian. Speaking of language, the novel is the first time anyone used the word "ultraviolence." Since then, it's been added to the dictionary.

Oh, and on a side note, Anthony was drinking buddies with William S. Burroughs. How cool is that?!

Nick told us a funny story behind that "Singin' in the Rain" scene. When it came time to shoot that scene, the script didn't specify what song Alex was supposed to sing while he beat up the writer and raped his wife. So Stanley Kubrick told Malcolm McDowell to sing whatever song came to mind. Malcolm said he didn't know any songs by heart. Stanley was like, "Oh come on. You must know at least one song. How could you not know any songs?" So when the cameras started rolling, Malcolm sang the first tune that popped into his noggin. You guessed it: "Singin' in the Rain". But it gets even better. A few years later, at a party in the Hollywood Hills, Malcolm McDowell was standing around drinking with one of his buddies. At one point his buddy was like, "Dude! Gene Kelly's right behind you!" When Malcolm turned around to say hey, Gene turned away from him and stalked off. He never spoke to Malcolm the entire time, so irate was he about the use of that song during what's probably the most disturbing scene in the film.

Nick first saw A Clockwork Orange in January 1972, about a month after it opened, at the Warner West End cinemas in Leicester Square. What made the movie extra scary at the time was how real it was. Yeah, it was set in some unspecified near future, but it nonetheless reflected with a stark accuracy the way London's youth culture was at the time. That is, ultraviolent. Nick said it was funny how Americans tend to perceive English culture as very genteel. In the sixties and seventies, at least, that couldn't have been further from the truth. Youth gangs and hooliganism were rampant. Literally right outside the Warner West End, Nick said, you'd be wise to tread carefully. He essentially was watching a movie that reflected what was going on right outside the cinema doors.

A Clockwork Orange only exacerbated things. After a year and a half in the cinemas and innumerable reports of copycat violence, Stanley Kubrick himself spearheaded a campaign to banish his own baby from all screens in Britain. The ban remained in effect until shortly after his death in 1999. Still, though, despite that tempestuous relationship with the public, this flick was positively critic proof. Its Oscar nomination for Best Picture made it the second X-rated film ever to get that nomination. It also scored noms for Best Director, Best Screenplay Adaptation, and Best Editing. In Britain, despite its eventual ban, it scored no less than seven BAFTA nominations (the British equivalent of the Oscar).

Since this was being shown as part of the L.A. Philharmonic's Concrete Frequency program, Nick eventually talked about the music in the film, and more specifically about the person who composed the music. I tell ya, even if this wasn't part of a music event, it would still be worth talking about this cat. The soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange was composed by a 32-year-old from Rhode Island named Walter Carlos. Never heard of 'im? This is the guy who basically pioneered the use of synthesized and electronic music. In the late sixties he put the Moog synthesizer on the map with his album Switched-on Bach, the very first ever album of completely synthesized classical music and which scored Carlos three Grammys. Surely he had a ball with A Clockwork Orange. That opening piece alone was terrific and is repeated throughout the film. I couldn't get enough of it. He also got to do for Beethoven what he did for Bach, whenever Alex de Large in the film pops in, as he calls it, a "little of the Ludwig van." About a year or so after the film, Walter Carlos underwent a sex change operation and became Wendy Carlos. The music didn't stop. She did an album called Switched-on Brandenburgs and contributed to the soundtracks of The Shining and Tron. As a side note, Wendy's got a thing for solar eclipses. If you go to her site (wendycarlos.com), she's got a page chockfull of information and images of solar eclipses she's been documenting since 1963.

Nick also talked a bit about Stanley's background and character. Born in New York, he made England his permanent home in his mid thirties, around the time he made Lolita. If you're wondering why A Clockwork Orange is such a "wholly English film," as Nick put it, it's because Stan had already been living in England for about a decade at that point. Stan was very reactionary when picking his projects. In other words, he sort of let them find him. He'd never heard of Anthony Burgess or his novel A Clockwork Orange until a friend passed it along to him. But if you're wondering why Stan only turned out four more films in the 28 years still left to him, it wasn't because he was reactionary or that he fell out of love with movie making. It's because he became ever more obsessive compulsive to the point that directing a film became a chore more daunting and consuming than it already is in general. Before releasing The Shining for instance, Stan literally watched all 800 prints of the final cut. Yes, I mean that literally. Dude sat and watched The Shining 800 times, not because he adored it so much, but because he wanted to make sure the sound was all right. In his perfect world, all theaters would have mono sound. That way, there was no chance of a speaker crapping out and compromising the film's soundtrack. Since that just wasn't realistic, he decided to make sure himself, print by print, that if there were any sound issues, the fault wouldn't lie on his end. Eventually Stan minimized his use of original scores. The more inflamed his OCD became, the greater the chance he wouldn't like whatever original music the composer came up with. So he just started using old songs he knew he liked. That's too bad. It would've been really cool to see what kind of music Wendy Carlos could've come up with for a flick like Eyes Wide Shut.

At the Movies with Governor Tom: Mad Money

Back in December 2001, a British made-for-TV movie aired on the BBC called Hot Money. Based on true events, Hot Money concerns three gals named Bridget, Liz, and Jackie, who work as cleaners at the Bank of England. When they discover that heaps of banknotes totaling thousands of pounds have been earmarked for the Bank of England's incinerating plant in Essex because they're too used and worn, the trio plot to make off with all that dough. Sure, it may be worn paper money, but it's still perfectly useable. So they stuff all the cash down their underwear and try to walk out like everything's hunky-dory.

Texan filmmaker Callie Khouri, who stormed onto the scene back in '91 when she scored a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Thelma & Louise (the first script she ever wrote), has directed an American remake of Hot Money called Mad Money. Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes play the three would-be heisters: Bridget, Nina (called Liz in the original), and Jackie. The story takes place in Kansas City, Missouri, the bank in question now the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Diane Keaton's character Bridget is our heroine. For decades now she's been a stay-at-home mom while her husband Don (Ted Danson) has been climbing the corporate ladder. The plot kicks off when Don, now a senior veep, is "downsized," which of course means laid off. Or as the British would say, Don was made redundant. And before I go further, I should point out that Ted Danson easily steals every scene he's in. Growing up on Cheers as I did, it was great seeing Sam Malone in top form. His performance is all the more impressive considering he's just come off playing the sociopathic Arthur Frobisher on the first season of the FX drama Damages. To go from Arthur Frobisher to this flick is quite a feat. Bravo, Sammy!

Anyway, Bridget's desperate not to change her lifestyle and not to sell the house, six-figure debts be damned. So while Don licks his ego's wounds, Bridget, armed with an ancient resume and her BA in comparative lit, lands a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank. One day, while polishing the monitor screens in the surveillance office, she sees someone on one of the screens shredding tons and tons of worn out paper money. While pretending to go through the motions as the janitor, Bridget eventually meets the woman down in the shredding room who has the dubious pleasure of grinding up all those dollars. Her name's Nina (Queen Latifah), and for eight hours every day it's her job to shred no less than a million dollars' worth of dead presidents. Nina's a single mom to two boys and has little sympathy for Bridget's upper middle class problems. Still, the two hit it off and soon become pals. I should say here, by the way, that Queen Latifah is terrific as Nina. In fact, she seems to get better with each film. Anyway, while befriending Nina, Bridget comes up with a plan to smuggle out some of that wasted dough. I won't go into the details of her plan, but suffice it to say that as with the three gals from the British original, it involves cramming as many greenbacks down their trousers as is humanly practical.

The only trouble is, they need one more person to make it work. Jackie (Katie Holmes) works as a money cart pusher. I'm not sure what her official job title is, but that's basically what she does. Once the money sorters decide which money should be shredded, they count it all up and stack it inside this giant cart. And then Katie Holmes has to wheel it down to Nina in the shredding room. After convincing an at-first very skeptical Nina to take part in her plan, Bridget as well as Nina take Jackie out to Junior's, a pub that's basically Bridget's local. She and Junior have known each other for years. Whereas Nina needed a lot of convincing, though, Jackie pretty much agrees to the plan right away. She and her some-young-guy live in a trailer and wouldn't mind a few extra ducats. Yes, you guessed it, Jackie isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the military surplus store, and her husband is even worse. But hey, what does Bridget care so long as Jackie does what she's supposed to do and her man doesn't get in the way? In fact, Jackie's husband Bob is more than happy to help in any way he can, and he does. A little too much. In fact, Bob inadvertently makes things a little too complicated for our three heroines.

I won't go too much further into the story because, as with any heist film, part of your enjoyment hinges on not knowing the twists ahead of time. At first, the plan goes off swimmingly. Then the scheme seems destined for the fate any moviegoer could predict, but Callie Khouri never quite gives you what you expect. She, in fact, is the reason I caught the sneak preview of Mad Money last night at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks. She was there afterward for a Q&A, interviewed by Parade writer Jeanne Wolf.

Back in 1982 when she was 25, Callie Khouri moved out to L.A. to be an actor. She studied acting at the Strasburg Institute. Then she was like, "Nah, I don't wanna act. I wanna be on the more creative side." To tide herself over, she found a gig as a receptionist at a production company that made commercials. After work, she'd work on a screenplay by hand. Then, during the day when there was dead time at the office, she'd type up the script on the computer. This script we're talking about here? You guessed it. Thelma & Louise.

After landing on the Hollywood star map for Thelma (which won her not only an Oscar but also a Golden Globe and a WGA award), Callie went on to write the screenplay for 1995's Something to Talk About, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, that Swedish maestro of the feel-good flick, starring Julia Roberts, Dennis Quaid, and Robert "God" Duvall. She then made her directorial debut with 2002's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, for which she also penned the script adaptation. That had a ton of well-known actresses: Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd, Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan, Cherry Jones, you name it. Between projects she works as a script doctor on other people's stuff. I have to confess that I didn't catch Something or Ya-Ya until very recently, but of course we've all seen Thelma & Louise. Right? No? Well dude, put it on your queue, stat. It's directed by Ridley Scott, which means everyone should see it by default. Don't worry about the unhappy ending. It doesn't spoil anything. And besides, if you ask Callie, the ending was more than happy. When she accepted her Oscar for writing it, she went up on stage, held up her statue, and was like: "For those of you who wanted a happy ending to Thelma & Louise, this is it." Awwwww.......

Speaking of Thelma, at one point in the Q&A Callie talked about how floored she was at all the academic interest her debut screenplay has attracted over the years. There've been papers, books, you name it, all this stuff analyzing that one film and its place in the pop culture canon. So many people, Callie said, have been thinking about that flick much more than she ever did. Her only goal was to tell a rip-roaring yarn about women taking charge. Another thing that surprised her about Thelma was the scene where Louise (Susan Sarandon) kills that one guy. When she first watched it in the theater with an audience, she expected there to be stunned silence. Instead, she said people were cheering and clapping their heads off. Since then, she's given up trying to predict audience reaction.

Callie, by the way, is a petite blonde thing who doesn't look anywhere near 50. With her husky voice she kicked off the Q&A by talking about how it took close to forever to get Mad Money to the screen. Less than a year after the BBC aired Hot Money, Callie already had a deal with MGM to direct the American remake. They had a script by a chap called Glenn Gers, and Callie had producer Jay Cohen to help her out. Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah had already signed on to do it. Everything seemed set to go...and then Sony bought a controlling interest in MGM. The project was relegated to development purgatory. Finally the film went into turnaround, and Callie and Jay got it back. Jay wasted no time in securing independent financing. Amazingly, Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah were still interested in doing it. The reason I say amazingly is that, as Callie herself pointed out during the Q&A, actors rarely retain an interest in a project if it's taking forever to get it off the ground. As for Katie Holmes, she was the second choice. If it were a perfect world, Callie said she would have angled for Lindsay Lohan to play Jackie, but we all know Lindsay's world at the moment is light years from perfect. Her drug abuse notwithstanding, Callie couldn't rave enough about what a great actress Lindsay is. I happen to agree with her. If you saw Freaky Friday or Mean Girls, you'll know that Lindsay was on a roll and had so much going for her before she blew her foot off. That said, Katie Holmes was a close second choice. Callie offered her the part assuming she'd opt out of it so she could reprise her character from Batman Begins in this summer's The Dark Knight. But nope. Jackie's a much meatier character than Rachel Dawes, so Katie said yes to Callie. By the way, the character of Rachel will still be in The Dark Knight but will now be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

When Glenn Gers sold the script, he wanted to direct it. Then Callie came aboard and said she'd do it, which was fine by Glenn. He figured if there was one person more qualified than him to direct his girl power flick, it would have to be Callie Khouri. It was sort of the reverse situation of when Callie sold Thelma & Louise. At first, she wanted to direct it. She said she had that whole thing mapped out in her head practically shot for shot. Then, when Ridley stepped in and said he'd do it, she was like, "Well okay. If the guy who made Blade Runner wants to make my movie, how can that be a bad thing?" Callie was much nicer to Glenn, by the way, than most directors are to their writers. With rare exception, screenwriters are barred from the set during production. Not Glenn, though. Callie insisted he be there every day and was very open to him helping her work out any last-minute story wrinkles. Now that is rare. Glenn is one lucky dude.

It took 39 days to shoot Mad Money, and Callie's amazed she was able to get it done in that time. She didn't mean to go that fast, but the budget sort of demanded it. She shot Ya-Ya in 55 days, which at the time she deemed to be very quick. She remembered not believing she was "only" being given barely two months to do it. Although Mad Money is set in K.C., it was shot entirely in Shreveport, Louisiana. I'm sure the budget dictated that as well. If Shreveport was cheap, though, it certainly wasn't healthy. Everyone in the cast and crew got sick with the flu at some point. Callie said that Ted Danson was sick as a dog the entire shoot, which makes his scene-stealing turn all the more impressive.

During preproduction Callie paid a visit to the real Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and was given a grand tour. However, the point of that research wasn't so she could create an interior set that would look just like the real bank, but so that she could create an interior set that would look nothing like the real thing. The powers that be at the bank wanted to be sure Callie wasn't going to give would-be thieves any ideas about trying to pull off a copycat heist. So if there are any nutters in the audience who think this movie's giving them some inside look at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, they're in for a big surprise.

The recurring theme during the shoot was the hair. It was all about the hair. Callie said that never in her life has she ever seen so much attention paid to hair as was paid to the hair of her three leading ladies. We're not just talking about their hair being done in the trailer every morning. Even between takes on a single scene, assistants would run up to the gals and touch up the hair. All that stopping and starting meant more time for the three gals to chat away with each other. Callie said that Diane, Queen, and Katie got along so famously that now and then she'd have to step in and remind them that there was a movie to make here. Diane Keaton must be used to this process because Callie couldn't stop raving about Diane's ability to go in and out of character on a dime. Still, though. However much time was wasted by their gabbing, obviously it's better to have your three leads get along, right? There were two instances in particular Callie talked about. The first was the scene in Junior's BBQ joint where Diane and Queen are telling Katie about their heist idea. And then there's a scene during the first heist where all three of them are in a bathroom stall stuffing greenbacks down their shorts. When Callie saw how easily they pulled off those scenes, she knew her movie was going to work out.

As thrilled as she was to have Katie Holmes in the cast, she still had to deal with paparazzi stalking the set. Callie couldn't emphasize their ubiquity enough. The damned buzzards were in the trees, on the rooftops, everywhere. When it came time to shoot Katie's first scene, Callie was sincerely concerned that Katie wouldn't be able to do it with weirdo photographers clicking away from all over the place. It's the one scene where she dances to her car in the parking lot with her iPod, and Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah first approach her about the job. Katie must be used to the extra attention because she nailed her scene on the first take. Tom Cruise paid a visit to the set with his and Katie's daughter, Suri. Callie gushed like a schoolgirl about Tom and his "megawatt charisma."

What impressed Callie about Queen Latifah was how she could remember precisely how she did a scene several hours earlier when it was shot from a different angle. You see, when you shoot a scene, it's likely that you'll want to shoot from several different angles and then edit it all together later. The thing is, though, that can take forever. It takes forever to set up the scenes, especially the lights. No, really, if you've ever been involved in making a flick, even a short flick, you'll know that it's all about the lights. So when you shoot a scene from one angle, it could be two or three hours (or days) before you shoot the rest of that scene from additional angles. What Queen Latifah did that set her apart was remember precisely the way she was sitting or standing, her facial expression, mannerisms, whatever, when the first angle of the scene had been shot so that she could replicate it precisely for the next angle. Callie's never seen someone do that so well.

When Jeanne Wolf asked her what she preferred more between writing and directing, Callie said hands down it was directing. She went on to echo something I read in a George Lucas interview a few years ago. To her, writing a screenplay feels like writing a term paper. It seems like work that you'll never get done. With all due respect to Callie, I'm sorta glad she didn't write Mad Money then, although I think it's ironic as hell that she wrote such a zeitgeist-nailing film as Thelma & Louise. As a writer myself, I can't imagine why someone would choose to write if it seems like homework. When George Lucas said it, I immediately figured out why the Star Wars prequels were so poorly written. They were being written by a man who hates to write. Why he didn't farm out the screenplay duties to writers who like to write, as he did on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, is beyond me. Anyway, if Callie prefers strictly to direct, that's awesome. The next time she comes out with something, I'll be there to see it. I just hope it doesn't take another six years.