Extra Mile Movies

Lawrence of Arabia is a conundrum to deconstruct in terms of storytelling techniques since it represents excellence in the three essential elements of screenwriting: visual language, dialogue and structure. The difficulty with Lawrence of Arabia is that three different individuals are responsible for these elements. David Lean, the director, Robert Bolt, the screenwriter who for thirty-three years received sole credit, and Michael Wilson, who was award co-screenwriting credit in 1995 by the Motion Picture Academy Board of Directors.

This difficulty is further compounded by the casting of Peter O’Toole, whose performance as T. E. Lawrence gives these elements a singular and enduring screen identity. O’Toole came into the production as a last minute replacement. Several actors were considered for the lead role and Albert Finny was actually cast. There are costume production stills of him in uniform. Finny resembles the real Lawrence and is almost his height (which became a frivolous criticism of O’Toole), but he dropped out to star in Tom Jones, a career move that made him rich and famous, without having to spend a year in a desert inferno.

O’Toole’s portrayal of the complex scholar and military tactician is that of a deeply tortured soul driven to the brink of madness. O’Toole’s wild, blue-eyed stare on posters foretold of a different kind of epic hero. This wasn’t the traditional Hollywood hero as performed by Gregory Peck or Charlton Heston, who masked their characters with steely determinism. O’Toole’s stare is of a dashingly handsome man in the midst of moral and psychological collapse. This is what Lean and Bolt were going for, and this is probably why for over three decades they refused to acknowledge Wilson’s contributions.

In the 1950’s and early 60’s there was a movement in British theatre and film called “kitchen sink” dramas. These gritty, low-budgeted, documentary style films focused on restless British youths who railed against The Establishment and rebelled at anything that got in their paths. They were unvarnished psychodramas that turned labor class anti-heroes into tarnished kings of their tiny realms.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runners is one of the most famous examples of this genre, where a young, authority-hating prisoner in a reform school gets the opportunity for special favors from “the Governor” if he wins the race against the local rivals. He gets within a few yards of the finish line – and sits down, staring defiantly at the Governor as the rival team wins.

Lawrence of Arabia is perhaps the most expensive and certainly most magnificent looking “kitchen sink” drama ever shot. Forget that it’s based on a real historical person, this is a film about man who disobeys orders, discovers he enjoys killing, goes power crazy, betrays his friends, causes a bloody, unnecessary massacre, lets prisoners die of starvation and disease, and in the end goes off his noodle. In the final shot he listlessly gazes at the dust kicked up by a motor bike, bringing full circle his accidently death which opened this almost four-hour epic.

And yet this is acclaimed as the greatest high adventure ever.

There is certainly adventure, but surprisingly little upon examination. The attack on Akaba happens 146 minutes into the film and lasts for less than three minutes. The quicksand lasts for two minutes. And destroying the Turkish train lasts for less than thirty seconds, followed by a brief, one-sided skirmish.

The attack on the retreating Turkish army on the road to Damascus is eight minutes long, but a massacre of under-equipped soldiers, no matter how majestically filmed, isn’t the stuff of swashbuckling high adventure. And for the last twenty minutes of Lawrence of Arabia the most exciting things are shouting matches and the lights going out in the city.

There is no chariot race, no giant Nazi canons that get blown up, no bridge that gets blown up, and no duel to the finish, like in Hamlet. Nevertheless, I have seen this film over twenty times, and if I catch it midway I will watch it to the end. It is the film that made me realize how extraordinary filmmaking could be, and, in my eyes, turned David Lean into a god with a 70mm camera.

It is also a film of many fortuitous creative accidents. Lean had worked with another cinematographer before bringing Freddie Young on board. Young won the Academy Award for Lawrence of Arabia, and would win two more for Doctor Zhivago and Ryan’s Daughter creating the look associated with Lean’s later films. His collaboration with Lean is similar to Francis Ford Coppola and Gordon Willis on The Godfather films. Both cases resulted in movies with a distinctive look that have never been duplicated.

Lean had wanted composer Malcolm Arnold, who had done The Bridge on the River Kwai, to score the film but was turned down. He approached William Walton, best known for his work on Laurence Olivier’s Henry V and Hamlet, but again turned down. Producer Sam Spiegel introduced Lean to French composter Maurice Jarre, who was associated with the French New Wave and almost completely unknown at the time. He was given just six weeks to create the music.

Then there is Peter O’Toole stepping into the role at the last minute, despite the fact he was nine-inches taller than the real Lawrence. But the height didn’t matter. What did matter was to find an actor that could hold a 30 x 90 foot screen for almost four hours, and do deployable things without the audience turning against him.  Finny is a marvelous actor, versatile, humorous, and has great energy. But with O’Toole’s radiant blue-eyes and high cheekbones, no actor can match him when the role calls for inner-turmoil.

The expression “a David Lean shot” is used when the lightning, composition, and camera placement are absolutely perfect. Many films have a few “David Lean shots” but Lawrence of Arabia is all perfect shots, many of them defying reason on how they were achieved. There is no other film that has the look and vast scope of Lawrence of Arabia. And considering that some shots took two or three days to capture, just for a few seconds of action, it is doubtful that there will ever to be another film to match it. Take a random single frame, blow it up and display it. It will look like a work of art.

But without Maurice Jarre’s music these perfect images would seem self-indulgent, dragging down the pace of the film. Turn off the sound on any of the montage sequences and immediately the romantic feel for the desert vanishes. Arnold and Walton supposedly refused the offers to compose for Lawrence of Arabia because they did not know how to musically interpret Lean’s vision. Jarre’s music gives a sense of awe and wonderment about the rolling sand dunes and jagged cliffs of the unspoiled desert landscape. He turns the desert into a major character, a character that transforms Lawrence into a hero – and then destroys him.

There is less than fifteen minutes when Peter O’Toole is not on the screen. No actors besides Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind and Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur have had to carry the full weight of such a giant production. The difference is that O’Toole had to play parts of Lawrence’s life that were not filmed.

This is where the elements of visual language, dialogue and structure come in. In a clever bit of storytelling, Lawrence of Arabia opens with Lawrence’s accidental death on a motor bike, and ends with Lawrence transfixed by the image of motor bike as he leaves Arabia. This gives the impression he returns home and is killed shortly afterwards. In fact, he died seventeen years later. The Arab Revolt was less than two years of his life.

His later years are problematic, especially for a big budgeted adventure movie. Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as a member of Faisal’s delegation for independence, but his appeals went mostly unheard. In part to hide from the fame brought upon him by Lowell Thomas’ touring show about his Arabian exploits, and his own autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he changed his name several times to join the RAF and the Royal Tank Corps.

However, his past always caught up with him. There are rumors and scholarly debates that persist to this day about espionage activities, homosexuality, and being flogged for sexual gratification. There is even a conspiracy theory that his death was an assassination and not an accident. The British playwright Terence Rattigan wrote a screenplay that was not produced. Later he turned it into Ross, a play about Lawrence’s life under a false identity and his possible homosexual activities. On stage the title character was performed by Alec Guinness.

With so many different story directions, the structure for Lawrence of Arabia became an exercise in restraint. It is easy to watch the film now and say this is the only way it could have been put together. But it is really two different stories about Lawrence, from different times in his life, superimposed into one epic tale.

Lean wanted to capture the mysterious Lawrence who emerged after the Arab Revolt. During the Arab campaign, Lawrence was a very active soldier fighting against overwhelming odds in hit-and-run guerrilla warfare. This was the Lawrence of Lowell Thomas’ popular touring show. However, in later life the psychological effects of his war experiences, perhaps combined with his troubled childhood, seems to have created a man in constant conflict with his inner being.

Orson Welles once speculated that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet to see if he could give voice to a character of genius. In doing so the Old Bard established a literary tradition that genius can reach great heights – and then plummet into great darkness when there is nothing to challenge the ceaseless curiosity of the mind. Sherlock Holmes is an example of such a genius, and so is Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. Holmes has been played a thousand times, and is such a perfectly created character that he’s almost actor proof.

But the sadistic genius of Kurtz has never been brought to the screen. Welles tried, but then abandoned the project. Apocalypse Now succeeds in capturing the mood of Joseph Conrad’s short novel, but Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Kurtz is too much Brando and too little Kurtz. But Brando is not to blame. Conrad is. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle kept his detective on the move, and action seems to be one of the secrets to bringing genius to life.

T. E. Lawrence was unquestionably a genius. Like Holmes, he was a scholar of the world, a manipulator of people, a man of many disguises, self-destructive, reflective, yet quick to act when his mind is made up. Lean’s first choice to play Lawrence was Brando, but instead Brando made the ill-fated Mutiny on the Bounty. But even if Brando had behaved (which is unlikely in 130-degree weather for a year), he probably would not have brought the sense of conflicted genius to Lawrence the way O’Toole did. Lean realized that O’Toole’s expressive eyes could conjure the conflicted look of genius, as the man ran the emotional gauntlet from innocence to moral depravity. 

David Lean is a master of dramatic irony. As an editor he put together George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Major Barbara. His mentor was Noel Coward, who co-directed Lean’s first film, In Which We Service. Then Lean directed Coward’s plays of This Happy Breed, Blithe Spirit, and the international hit Brief Encounter. At the end of Brief Encounter, the husband thanks his wife for returning, implying that he knew all along that there was another man. This is the very definition of dramatic irony.

Lean turned to Charles Dickens with Great Expectation and Oliver Twist. Dickens loved irony. Young Pip in Great Expectations thinks his benefactor is crazy old Miss Havisham, but it turns out to be someone completely unexpected. And the orphan Oliver Twist turns out to be from respectable parentage. Often Lean will turn away from a violent act. In Oliver Twist, Lean pans away from Bill Sikes’ brutal murder of Nancy to show the dog trying to claw its way out of the room, And in Lawrence of Arabia, the camera stays on Lawrence as he executes Gasim.

In The Bridge on the River Kwai, Colonel Nicholson endures torture to take a stand against Colonel Saito’s treatment of the British prisoners. But the success of this moral victory turns him into a man who thinks of building a monument to British fortitude – the bridge – only to realize that his vanity has aided the enemy.

This brings us to Michael Wilson, and ultimately to a bit of unflattering irony about Lean. Lean met Wilson during the Hollywood Blacklist. Wilson is one of the great tragedies of this dark era. He wrote only a fraction of what he might have if he didn’t get caught up in the ugly politics of McCarthyism. As a screenwriter, he has some of the most famous films in history to his credit. He worked on It’s a Wonderful Life, shared an Academy Award for A Place in the Sun, and adapted Friendly Persuasion, but was denied screen credit due to the rules of the Blacklist.

Wilson took over the adaption of The Bridge on the River Kwai from fellow blacklisted writer Carl Foreman. After almost a complete rewrite, it was his script that reached the screen. But Wilson had to watch as French novelist Pierre Boulle, who everyone knew did not speak English, received sole screenwriting credit and the Oscar. Wilson is reported to have cried as he watched the credits when the film was released. Allegedly on the night of the Academy Awards, Lean argued with Sam Spiegel about announcing who the real writer was. But this didn’t happen.

With a touch of real life irony, one of Wilson’s first Hollywood assignments after the Blacklist was Planet of the Apes, based on a novel by Pierre Boulle. Wilson was officially awarded his Oscar for The Bridge on the River Kwai by the Motion Picture Academy in 1984, six years after his death. He never saw his screen credit.

And Wilson never saw his screen credit for Lawrence of Arabia, which was not officially credited to him until 1995, four years after Lean passed away. So, why did it take thirty-three years for this to be acknowledged? In part – and this is purely speculative – because of guilt.

Lean had a close association with Wilson, who had managed to solve the enormous story problems in adapting The Bridge on the River Kwai. They wanted to work together again and decided to undertake the story of T. E. Lawrence, a project that had been talked about since the silent era. It was Wilson who convinced A. W. Lawrence, the younger brother, to sell the rights to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom to producer Sam Spiegel. And it was Wilson who wrote the first draft of the screenplay, along with several rewrites.

And then there was a falling out. Among the many reasons are that Wilson wanted to keep the story closer to the historical facts, and Lean claimed that the dialogue was weak. Lean then turned to playwright Robert Bolt, who was around for much of the filming. But the basic story structure that Wilson devised, and which Bolt built upon, remained unchanged.

In 1960, when screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was given credits for Spartacus and Exodus, the Hollywood Blacklist was effectively over. Lean had known Wilson since the mid-50’s, and he won his first Academy Award directing a screenplay that Wilson wrote. But because of his political predicament, Wilson was writing for much less than the salary he received for A Place in the Sun. And he obviously could not turn to the Writers Guild of America for arbitration because of the Blacklist. Lean had a vision for Lawrence of Arabia, and after several rewrites Wilson must have felt he could not make the changes to satisfy Lean’s interpretation of the enigmatic character.

Wilson and Lean had talked for long hours about how to turn Lawrence’s complex life into a movie. Wilson secured the story rights from the estate and wrote the first draft, which became the general structure for the final film. And by the time Lawrence of Arabia was released the Blacklist had ended.

However, the problem remained that Wilson was hired for a studio-backed major motion picture with the full knowledge of Lean and Spiegel who knew he was blacklisted. But Trumbo was in the same situation and he received screen credit from producers Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger. The difference is Trumbo had not written an earlier film for these producers which went on to win Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

For whatever the reasons, Wilson’s contributions to Lawrence of Arabia were conveniently ignored. Lean wanted to focus more on the character and less on the real events, common with directors that came out of the Studio System. One of the persisting criticisms of this epic film is that it is more fiction than fact. Steven Spielberg, who cites it as one of his favor movies and one of the reasons he decided to become a director, says that Lawrence of Arabia could never be made in the same way today. In the past years, films like The Hurricane and A Beautiful Mind have been criticized for bending or leaving out certain facts.

Lean wanted to show what made Lawrence tick – to visualize the mind of a genius. In his endeavor the truth became expendable to the inner-workings of the character. Like Pygmalion, Lean became obsessed with the character he was creating. And like many great artists, there is a lot of Lean in the character of Lawrence, arguably more than the real Lawrence. By working with Bolt, who had a knack for stylish stage speech, and O’Toole, who possessed a gift for feigning mental anguish, Lean was able to create a new image of Lawrence, one that now overshadows the original person.

This is what Shakespeare did with Richard III, but instead of words Lean did it with visual language. The popular attraction to Lawrence of Arabia isn’t the action sequences, which are undeniably spectacular, it is the fact that Lean created a cinematic vision that looks like no other motion picture. And at the center of this magnificent world is one of the most complicated characters ever put on film – the dramatic reincarnation of the real man.

When Lean finished, and the music was added, his collaboration with Wilson probably seemed like it was for a completely different film. And since the intelligent, witty dialogue belongs to Bolt (bringing to mind Lean’s old mentor Noel Coward), Bolt must have felt comfortable receiving sole writing credit. As stated, the visual language and dialogue in Lawrence of Arabia are excellent, but hopefully there were moments of guilt by both individuals for denying Wilson his due, and here is why.

In the writing credits for Raiders of the Lost Ark, George Lucas and Philip Kaufman are listed under Story By. The reason is that Kaufman suggested one critical story point: The Nazis were searching for the Lost Ark. Just this one idea influenced every aspect of the script.

In Lawrence of Arabia there are three story points, each one incredibly filmed – and with a minimum of dialogue. Without these story points the character of Lawrence would seem arrogant and probably become unsympathetic by the end of the movie. Each story point represents a personal crisis, thus allowing the audience to identify with the enormous psychological toil Lawrence endures. Each one is an example of story structure and dramatic irony, which Lean then turned into unforgettable visual moments.

At the outset of his desert exploration, in an act of appreciation, Lawrence gives the Bedouin guide his army revolver. The guide tries to use the revolver to protect himself from Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif in perhaps the greatest screen introduction ever) but is killed. Lawrence’s kindness causes the death of a man he had confided personal secrets about his childhood to only a few hours before.

Having made the nearly impossible journey across the Nefud Desert, Lawrence sees that one of the members, Gasim, has fallen off his camel during the night. Declaring that “nothing is written,” Lawrence goes out alone to find the missing man as the sun reaches its zenith. Returning with Gasim, Lawrence gains the respect of Sherif Ali. But right before the attack on Aqaba a blood feud erupts. In order to keep peace between the tribes, Lawrence, as a neutral party, volunteers to execute the murderer – who turns out to be Gasim. Hearing of this, Auda ibu Tayi (played by Anthony Quinn) comments that it “was written.”

After the surprise attack on Aqaba, Lawrence returns to Cairo to inform General Allenby of the victory over the Turks. During the trip one of the teenage orphans, who has been his servant, stumbles into quicksand and dies as Lawrence helplessly watches. Three times Lawrence’s noble actions result in the death of someone he had grown close to. The incident with the quicksand leaves him emotionally shattered, and later transforming him into a man who believes he can play god with people’s lives.

Each one of these story points is carefully planned in the structure of the screenplay. Each one is punctuated with a touch of humor. For his revolver, the Bedouin guide offers him food, which obviously tastes terrible but Lawrence – O’Toole – tries to cover this up with a forced smile. Gasim is like an unshaven sidekick in an old Hopalong Cassidy western, who gives his humorous blessings to the two orphans that become Lawrence’s servants. And the first scene with the orphans has them goosing a camel with a stick because the English rider cheated them out of cigarettes.

Several other story points, laced with irony, appear in the second half of the film. After several successful attacks on Turkish trains, the second orphan is badly injured by a blasting cap and Lawrence is forced to shoot him so he doesn’t become a prisoner. While scouting the Turkish city of Daraa, Lawrence teases Sherif Ali that he can walk on water, but is then captured and flogged, which becomes the final step in his mental decline. Within miles of Damascus, Lawrence orders an attacking on retreating Turks as Sherif Ali screams “God!” hopelessly three times. Lawrence arrives in Damascus before General Allenby, but the management of the city falls into chaos as the rival tribes shout insults at each other. In the end Lawrence, a shell of his former self, is praised for his efforts, promoted to Colonel, and then unceremoniously sent back to England.

As a crowning bit of irony, a British officer proudly shakes Lawrence’s hand as he is leaving, so he can said he had “done it.” Lawrence is dressed in his British uniform. It is the same officer who at the beginning of the film proudly proclaims he once shook Lawrence’s hand. It is also the same officer who violently slaps Lawrence for the “outrageous” conditions at the Turkish military hospital – but Lawrence is in his Arab dress and the officer doesn’t recognize him.

Each of these dramatic ironies is carefully planned, because each has footprints earlier in the screenplay. The British officer who shakes Lawrence’s hand has three scenes, but each scene is at a key moment in the story. The Bedouin guide, Gasim, the orphans, and Sherif Ali – who dislikes, then respects, and then is disillusioned with Lawrence – form the structure for Lean’s cinematic variation on the real man.

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” is a quote associated with John Ford, who, like Lean, was criticized in the revisionist history era as taking romanticized liberties with the truth. Lean was an admirer of Ford and studied The Searchers before starting on Lawrence of Arabia. And like Ethan Edwards in The Searches, Lawrence is man at odds with his inner emotions. But the Lawrence in the film is more like what the real man became after the Arab Revolt.

Lean uses the action of the war to superimpose these two separate identities into a single fascinating character – another trick of dramatic irony. Lawrence at the end of the film is very much like Ethan Edwards in the final scene of The Searchers, a man destined to live his life as an outsider.

Story structure is an invisible part of a very visual art form. An audience appreciates the breathtaking images, great performances, smart dialogue, inspiriting music, but they never elbow each other and whisper “that was a terrific bit of irony.”

Like the character of Lawrence, upon inspection the film is full of unsolved mysteries. It is impossible to know Michael Wilson’s involvement with all these story points, but his contributions became the story foundation for Lean and Bolt.  William Goldman writes that his dialogue for All the President’s Men was changed almost completely, but his structure for the story remains. This is the same situation as Wilson, but Goldman didn’t have to wait thirty-three years for his screen credit.

Try to imagine a shy, sexually inexperienced Robert Redford saying in shocked disbelief, “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me.” Not easy to picture, is it?

Mrs. Robinson, the original cougar lady, putting the moves on Redford?  No big surprise there. But if this same mature woman hit on a young, uptight, completely unknown Dustin Hoffman – if you can imagine back that far – now that’s a whole different story.

Mike Nichols said that Redford was considered for Benjamin. How serious this consideration was, or if this is mostly a Hollywood urban legend, the real question is:  How would Redford’s casting, two years before he became the Sundance Kid, have changed the screenplay? To begin with, Mrs. Robinson would be far more sympathetic. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Robinson kind of sympathetic. And many funny lines might have fallen flat.

Benjamin: Look, maybe we could do something else together. Mrs. Robinson, would you like to go to a movie?

It is difficult to find fault with Redford as an actor, but vulnerable, indecisive, and inexperience with women don’t spring to mind when his name is mentioned. And even if he played these human frailties, his good looks send out a different message: He’s a natural born female magnet. Nevertheless, he should have been a shoe-in for Benjamin Braddock because he is close to the character’s description in Charles Webb’s novel.

The heart of the screenplay is Mrs. Robinson’s obsessive fear of loosing her sexual conquest to her daughter. This is never be a conscious competition, but her daughter is young and beautiful – breathtaking so, as played by Katharine Ross. Mrs. Robinson’s predator instincts tell her to find someone that her daughter, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t look at twice. That’s not Redford – that’s Hoffman.

Mrs. Robinson: Do you find me undesirable?

Benjamin: Oh no, Mrs. Robinson. I think, I think you’re the most attractive of all my parents’ friends. I mean that.

No one had seen anything like The Graduate before. It broke all the rules at a time when breaking the rules was groovy.  For audiences to see an older, attractive, experienced, married woman seduce a short, mixed-up brainiac literally turned Hoffman into the poster child of the Baby Boomers. Benjamin is a mixed-up mess of phobias who isn’t satisfied with his parent’s definition of material happiness. He is lost and worried about his future – along with several million other lost and worried college youths watching the movie. 

The Hollywood Production Code, like an old, punch-drunk boxer, had been retired the year before. Suddenly there were no Rules to follow. The Code had forbidden extramarital affairs, couples sharing the same bed, nudity, and inappropriate situations that lowered the standards of wholesome family values. Thus a movie about a college dropout having a sexual romp with his father’s partner’s wife and then proposing marriage to their daughter – well, it didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing the Old Code. It was like The Graduate took a sledgehammer to thirty years of Hollywood history and shattered it to bits.

Mike Nichols commented after viewing The Graduate years later that it looked surreal. The visual storytelling is extraordinary, with Benjamin walking into complete silhouette, deep focus with a leg in the foreground as Benjamin watches, and a slow zoom out of an emotionally shattered Mrs. Robinson. Legendary cinematographer Robert Surtees, who had won Oscars for classics like The Bad and the Beautiful and Ben-Hur, was to Nichols what Gregg Toland was to Orson Welles. With “new toys” to play with, sixty-two year old Surtees shot the film in the style of the French New Wave with a touch of Old Studio gloss.

Underscoring these images were the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, instead of a traditional lush full orchestra soundtrack. The Graduate threw open the gates to the New Hollywood. It is a perfect balance of script, casting and cinematography, with each of these elements breaking new ground.

The story trick to The Graduate is not to let Mrs. Robinson turn into a misunderstood creature of the night who is depended upon the kindness of strangers. And this is not easy trick to pull off. We know more about Mrs. Robinson than any other character. In college she got pregnant in a Ford and quickly married, giving up her ambition for a future in Art. Her bed has probably been cold since her daughter was born. And now she is beginning to show her miles as her daughter reaches her full maturity. The only real satisfaction in Mrs. Robinson’s life is that her daughter hasn’t made the same mistake she did. And she will go to any length to keep this from happening.

Mrs. Robinson might have had other affairs, but the impression is that she set her sights on Benjamin because she likes him. He amuses her. She would never admit it to herself, but Benjamin is her touchstone to the silly joys of youth that ended for her abruptly in college. If she loses Benjamin she loses her last chance for the life that might have been. The problem is that she doesn’t know how to be young and foolish – she doesn’t know how to be a pal.  Except for a few moments when she teases Benjamin, she is devoid of that important movie DNA: Humor. Without humor audiences tend not to take a character’s problem too seriously. This was Captain Bligh’s big downfall.

Benjamin is all humor. This is where Hoffman becomes inseparable from the character. For the first half of the movie he walks around half-dazed, with a deadpan expression like a young Buster Keaton suddenly transported to the 60’s.  He has had an active college life, full of sports and special honors. But it’s implied that the only thing he didn’t have was sex – the opposite of Mrs. Robinson’s college life. But Benjamin, though he doesn’t know it yet, is looking for something more than just sex.

Benjamin: It’s like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don’t make any sense to me. They’re being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up.

He’s looking for a pal. Someone he can talk to who understands what he is going through. All he had to do is turn to the audience and open up, because almost everyone watching The Gradate in 1967 understood what he was experiencing. But Benjamin is locked inside the movie and can’t find the right person. As it turns out that right person is the very person Mrs. Robinson has forbidden him to see – her daughter Elaine.

At first this isn’t a problem because Benjamin doesn’t want to see Elaine. They knew each other as children, but now have completely different lives. Benjamin isn’t interested because Elaine is like his kid sister. He finds the whole idea awkward. Besides, Elaine is more interested in tall, handsome, California blondes with “good walks” – like Robert Redford.

This might be one of the reasons Mrs. Robinson picks Benjamin, because he has never shown any interest in Elaine. Yet they have to meet, or else Benjamin’s character can’t go through its metamorphosis into manhood. If they don’t go out on a date, then there is no turnabout to the story. Like Benjamin’s Alfa Romeo, the film would run out of gas. The conflict happens when he calls up Mrs. Robinson and asks her to the Taft Hotel for drinks. His life is never the same after this.

Room Clerk: Are you here for an affair, sir?

Benjamin: What?

The circumstance in which Benjamin and Elaine get together is a simple but devilish clever story twist. If they just met and chat and suddenly fall in love, like in the Production Code days, the audience would have sensed a cop-out. Benjamin would have been stripped of his uniqueness, becoming Plot Twist #127, like in old-time Andy Hardy movies. The young audience watching would have felt duped.

So Buck Henry and Nichols decided to make the audience NOT like him.

Benjamin doesn’t want to take Elaine out. Mrs. Robinson has made him promise not to take Elaine out. But Mr. Robinson and Benjamin’s parents keep pushing and pushing. Suddenly taking Elaine out has all the allure of a nasty medicine procedure. Backed against the wall, Benjamin decides to give Elaine the date from Hell.

He walks fast through the crowd on Sunset Blvd., forcing her to keep up with him. He wears sunglasses so there’s no eye contact. And he takes her to a strip joint. He sits her next to the small stage and begins describing how good the performer’s specialty techniques are. Can you image Mickey taking Judy to a bump a’ grind bar? This scene alone rang the bells that the wicked Old Code was dead.

Then Elaine begins to cry. And the sight of Katharine Ross crying will melt the hardest of hearts. Now they can chat and fall in love, because now this is what the audience wants. It’s just another way to get to Plot Twist #127, but this way it feels new and fresh. Perhaps fifty percent of storytelling is boy-meets-girl encounters, so to make this ancient plot device seem new and fresh is a major achievement.

At this moment Benjamin has found his pal. He becomes energized and animated. He is no longer worried about his future – because his future is Elaine. Even after Elaine finds out about Benjamin and her mother and returns to college, putting an inky black cloud over any future relationship, he cheerfully makes plans to marry her.

Mr. Braddock: Ben, this whole idea sounds pretty half-baked.

Benjamin: Oh, it’s not. It’s completely baked.

Now Benjamin has to win over the girl he loves, who doesn’t love him anymore because he has made love to her mother. (Did I mention that the Production Code was dead?) Without question, this one of the oddest love triangles in movies. But instead of falling into a Tennessee Williams tragedy of unnatural desires, The Graduate becomes a screwball Romeo and Juliet – except in this version Romeo has slept with Juliet’s mother.

Benjamin hops in his red Alfa Romeo and travels up to Berkeley. In fact, Benjamin does a lot of traveling in the second half, up and down the Pacific Coast Highway as Simon and Garfunkel merrily sing. He finds Elaine. Mr. Robinson finds him. He looses Elaine. He runs out of gas. And he finds Elaine again in a surreal church just as she marries a Redford-type.

With crucifix swinging, the story showdown happens in the church, where Elaine in her white wedding dress and Benjamin in rumpled clothes flees an angry mob comprised of their parents.  The couple catches a bus going to nowhere, bringing down the curtain on an open-ended, bittersweet finale.  

The Graduate proved that leading men didn’t need to look like leading men anymore. That Franz Waxman didn’t need to compose a dark, intense score, since contemporary tunes worked better. That scared cows of the Old Code were fair game. And that there were a lot of young people waiting for a movie about mixed up young people. Benjamin staring down in confusion at Mrs. Robinson’s shapely leg became an icon of the 60’s.

What are overlooked are the things that The Graduate didn’t do that have insured the movie’s appeal to different generations. It’s a film about the 60’s that captures the anxiety of the youth rebellion without trying to look like the psychedelic 60’s. Benjamin doesn’t have a tie-dyed shirt, long hair and headband. Elaine doesn’t have love beads. There is one scene at the hamburger drive-in with hippies – whose garb looks a little too neat and planned. Otherwise there is nothing in The Graduate to date it.

The cinematography is so innovative that it still looks like it was shot yesterday. And there is a timeless simplicity to Simon and Garfunkel’s songs that creates nostalgia, like “Greensleeves” and traditional English folk songs. Whether intentionally or blind luck, The Graduate captures the state-of-mind of the 60’s without the clichés.

But it all starts with the screenplay. The thing that makes The Graduate work is clean, natural sounding dialogue and comes trippingly off the tongue. It’s clever and hip without winking cutely at the audience. Buck Henry, who is credited with the final draft of the screenplay, has performed in front of live audiences and co-wrote the classic television sitcom Get Smart with Mel Brooks.  He knows comic timing. He knows how to do a slow build to setup a punch line. And he knows that if the situation is a little bigger than life, the best thing is to underplay the dialogue and treat as if it was an everyday occurrence.

Benjamin: Listen to me. What happened between Mrs. Robinson and me was nothing. It didn’t mean anything. We might just as well have been shaking hands.

Mr. Robinson: Shaking hands? Well, that’s not saying much for my wife, is it?

Benjamin: You miss the point.

Mr. Robinson: I guess I do.

Benjamin: The point is that I don’t love your wife – I love your daughter, sir.

General “Buck” Turgidson: Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.

What cannot be imagined today is the kind of laughter that Dr. Strangelove evoked back in 1964 – that is, when there was laughter. The year before the U.S. of A. almost, as Major T. J. “King” Kong so eloquently puts it, committed to “nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies.” On live television, bald-headed Adlai Stevenson, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, told the Soviet representative that he would wait “until Hell freezes over” for an answer to his question if Russia had installed missiles in Cuba. Kids who were taught to “duck and cover” in school were fearful they might have to see if this really helped in an atomic blast.

Dr. Strangelove was greeted with either nervous laughter or dead silence.  Today it is seen as a wacky comedy about trigger happy generals. But when it came out, as hard as this is to believe now, there was still faith in the wisdom of the military and government. Dr. Strangelove was like kids putting a tack on the teacher’s chair and them cracking up about it in the bathroom. Or it was seen as a nightmare documentary which showed that no one was in control of the Ship of State.

Audiences lost their American apple pie virginity to Dr. Strangelove. It was a sign post that foretold of the chaos the world was about to be thrown into. President Kennedy had been assassinated three months before, replaced by the unrefined old war hawk from Texas. The Strategic Air Command was still bird-dogging the fail safe zones, and Wernher von Braun, the genius behind Hitler’s guided missiles, was America’s best hope in the race to the moon. And this was only Act One. In the decade that followed, Vietnam and Watergate would further erode the Norman Rockwell image of politicians and generals. 

Today viewers are not surprised by the antics of General Jack D. Ripper, General “Buck” Turgidson, President Merkin Muffley, or Soviet premier Dimitri Kisov, which is a sad example of how much, for better or worse, blind patriotism has vanished from the American scene.  Dr. Strangelove is one of those few films that feel inevitable, like it was destined to be made. Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Godfather and a handful of other films on the WGA list have this sense of inevitability. Yet Dr. Strangelove started out as a very different movie.

It is safe to say that Stanley Kubrick was not known as a comic director. There are no laughs in The Killing or Paths of Glory. Peter Ustinov is amusing in Spartacus, and Peter Sellers is funny in Lolita. But both films have serious underbellies. And so did Red Alert, the film that Dr. Strangelove almost was.

Kubrick had legendary obsessive fears, especially the fear of flying – and the fear that someone could push a button and start Doomsday. This is why he was attracted to Peter George’s well researched, deadly serious novel. Kubrick started working on a faithful adaptation of the thriller, but then something unexpected happened.

General “Buck” Turgidson: Am I to understand the Russian ambassador is to be admitted entrance to the War Room?

President Merkin Muffley: That is correct, he is here on my orders.

General “Buck” Turgidson: I don’t know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean, he’ll see everything – he’ll see the Big Board!

It’s said that satire opens on Friday and closes on Saturday. Network is satire, but anchored with real, highly articulate three-dimensional characters. Dr. Strangelove is a “frying chickens in the barnyard,” all-out satire. A Curly, Larry and Moe run the world black comedy. There is no other film like Dr. Strangelove that has reached such mass popular appeal. Kubrick originally shot a pie fight in the War Room, turning nuclear war into a Mack Sennett farce.

What caused Kubrick to make this gigantic U-turn from his original concept? Well, bodily fluids to start with.

General Jack D. Ripper: I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

As Billy Wilder knew, a serious story needs humor to release the dramatic tension. If a writer does not build in this release, then the audience might find an inappropriate moment to laugh. This evidently is what happened to Kubrick while working on the screenplay. In the middle of blowing up the world, he began to think about the unpredictable human factor.

What if a top priority phone call came in when a high ranking general was taking a crap? What if a brigadier general, in charge of the SAC airborne alert force, interprets the fatigue after having sex as part of a Communist conspiracy? What if the Soviet premier is drunk and in the middle of an orgy when the President of the United States calls to say his country is going to be bombed with nuclear weapons? And what if no one has enough pocket change to call the Pentagon with the recall code to stop an unprovoked attack started by a mad general who has “exceeded his authority?

When Kubrick began to interject these thoughts into a tale of global warfare he realized what a slapstick nightmare the world’s population was facing because of a few men and their war toys. General Curtis LeMay, who was the real life counterpart to General “Buck” Turgidson, never met a bomb he didn’t like or want to drop on the enemy.

General “Buck” Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops – depending on the breaks.

Sensing the time was right to expose the absurdity the Cold War had escalated into, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern, a free-wheeling author with a gift for bright, instantly quotable dialogue. And having complete faith in his comic genius, Kubrick gave Peter Sellers a blank check to run wild and adlib his lines as Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Dr. Strangelove. However with Slim Pickens as Major T. J. “King” Kong, Kubrick gave him only his pages from the script, telling him this was a serious movie – right up to the moment he rides down the nuclear bomb, yelling and waving his cowboy hat like he’s on a rodeo bull.

Lieutenant Lothar Zogg: Hey, where’d Major Kong go?

Dr. Strangelove is a visionary work that is inseparable from Kubrick the writer and Kubrick the director. He knew the material could careen out of control if it was played for laughs. The scenes in the B-52 are treated with the authenticity of an actual bombing mission, with step-by-step protocol. The attention to detail in these scenes, right down to the bizarre items in the survival kit and the look of the aircraft, are intended to convince the audience this is the real stuff – this is what would happen in an actual state of war.

The scenes at Burpelson Air Force Base, between General Jack D. Ripper and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, are also visually realistic and played like a Henrik Ibsen drama. Kubrick knew that if General Ripper’s utterly insane rational for launching the attack was treated as outright lunacy the underlining horror of the situation would be lost. Casting was paramount to making this work. In Ripper’s mind, he is the ultimate American hero, doing what no one else had the guts to do in the Cold War – take out Russia.

Sterling Hayden is one of the screen’s great tough guys, and starred in Kubrick’s The Killing. Hayden puffed on his cigar and said his lines with the matter-of-fact conviction of a soldier who believes wholeheartedly that God is on his side. Ripper also knows this is his only chance to explain his complicated reasoning to someone.

Peter Sellers is in Kubrick’s Lolita, stealing all of his scenes from veteran actor James Mason. Mandrake is potentially the dullest character in Dr. Strangelove, since his whole purpose is to stay calm and get the recall code. But Kubrick knew that Mandrake is the Everyman in film, the person the audience identifies with because his reactions are their reactions. Perhaps because of his improvisational background, Sellers had a gift for listening. In his two great films, Dr. Strangelove and Being There, the humor comes from his characters listening with an almost deadpan expression. It’s all in his eyes. Mandrake knows that if he overreacts to what General Ripper is saying it will make a hairy situation even worse.

Almost any director will say that casting is 90% of the job. It’s doubtful if Kubrick would have turned Red Alert into a comedy if Seller didn’t exist. This is another example of a writer creating a role – or roles, in this case – for a certain actor.

The War Room is where Kubrick’s vision truly comes alive. Since there is no such place, unlike the B-52 or Burpelson Air Force Base, this Valhalla of military prowess can be abstract and surrealistic. It looks like something out of German Expressionism, which is appropriate considering Dr. Strangelove’s tendency to confuse the President with the Fuhrer.

The look of the War Room allows the humor to become bigger-than-life. Kubrick had the giant round table painted lime green, like a Vegas poker table, as a reminder to the actors they were playing blackjack with the lives of millions. The scenes in the War Room, with the Big Board in the background, are pure visual storytelling. In Fail Safe, another doomsday thriller than came out the same year, the President ends up in a tiny fallout shelter with an interpreter. But in Dr. Strangelove the President and Chief of Staff are in the mother of all bunkers built expressly for the advent of nuclear war.

It is the image of the War Room that makes Dr. Strangelove memorable. This is visual writing at its finest, where a non-existent place, which represents the excesses and gamesmanship of war, is forever stuck in the minds of people as being real. For example, it is reported that newly elected President Ronald Reagan ask to visit the War Room, only to be informed that it doesn’t exist.

Kubrick knew that in the War Room, on a scale that dwarfed the occupants, he could unload his satire with both smoking barrels. In here President Merkin Muffley has a friendly chat with the drunken Soviet premier Dimitri Kisov, and General “Buck” Turgidson and Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadeski wrestle like children over a cheap pocket camera.

President Merkin Muffley: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.

Kubrick and Southern obviously had great fun making up names for their cast of characters. And they made a decision not to show one of the key characters, Soviet premier Dimitri Kisov. With Sellers’ ability to listen, in a wonderfully underplayed performance, he politely asks Dimitri to turn the music down and cautiously selects his words, like he is dealing with an elementary school bully. Seller’s nervous pauses as he listens to Dimitri’s replies paints a picture of the Soveit premier in each moviegoer’s mind that is better and funnier than anything that could have been shot.

In writing, sometimes the decision not to show something allows the audience to use their imagination, which is a very powerful and too often overlooked force in storytelling. This might be why so many fans were disappointed when Darth Vader removes his helmet in The Return of the Jedi.

And there must have been the temptation at some point to have the President look like John Kennedy, which would have put a black cloud over the film forever. Instead Sellers took on the persona of Adlai Stevenson, who had run for the presidency twice.

As Martin Scorsese observes, by having Dr. Strangelove open with B-52’s refueling in mid-air as “Try a Little Tenderness” softly underscoring, gives the impression the big bombers are copulating, and this sets up the feeling that “anything goes” for the rest of the movie. The film then plays out in real time, from the news of the alert to Major Kong riding down the bomb to the final discussion not to have a mineshaft gap.

It is divided into three acts: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake finding that radio stations are still transmitting. Mandrake, after giving orders to shoot a Coke machine for phone change, calling in the recall code. And Major Kong flying his wounded bomber to a target.

Major T. J. “King” Kong: Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing… but we got one little budge on them Rooskies. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain’t gonna spot us on no radar screen!

The sacred cows that Kubrick poked fun of in 1964 are now fair game for anyone who posts a blog on the Internet. And pretending for a moment that Dr. Strangelove was never made, there are no other movies that filled its place. Yes, it is a satire, but it was also the first in line to show that politicians and generals operate with an agenda is not always in the public’s best interests, which is standard operating procedure today for any political thriller.  

Mel Brooks, who also deals in the wacky world of satire, has said that laughter is the great equalizer. Once the audience laughs at something they once blindly respected or feared – this respect or fear is greatly diminished. Brooks changed the image of Broadway producers and cowboys, and Kubrick changed the image of generals and politicians.

Dr. Strangelove: Mein Führer! I can walk!

Butch Cassidy: Who are those guys?

If there was a year that marked the passing of the old Western, with the traditional good guys and bad guys, that year would be 1969. Westerns had always been metaphors for the right stuff and life lessons with chases and shoot-outs. And Westerns occasionally looked at the dark side of the human soul with films like The Ox-Bow Incident and High Noon.

By 1969 something else was happening in movies, something that took away the most important element of any Western – The Hero. With Civil Rights, Vietnam, the Women’s Movement, and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, motion pictures reflected an unhappy ending theme of “the death of heroes.” And if this wasn’t enough, suddenly Westerns didn’t have any good guys. There were only fun-loving anti-heroes and bad guys that weren’t as bad as the other bad guys. In this new west, if Roy Rogers had rode into town he would have been shot dead from all directions before he dismounted from Trigger – and Trigger probably would have been shot, too.

Even the time period of the Westerns became blurred. There was True Grit, set in the heydays of the Old West, and The Wild Bunch with steam engines and machine guns causing collateral damage to over-the-hill outlaws. Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin wandered into unfamiliar territory in Paint Your Wagon, and James Garner poked fun of the Wild West in Support Your Local Sheriff. And then there was Easy Rider, which Peter Fonda describes as two cowboys, Billy and Wyatt, on choppers, and Midnight Cowboy where Joe Buck tries to please the little ladies in swinging New York.

Also this was the year of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, set in the golden ambler sunset of the Old West (thanks to cinematographer Conrad Hall) when robbin’ banks and trains was still a respectable occupation. Much has been made of this being the first “buddy movie,” but that doesn’t really hold water. It’s pure vaudeville with Redford being the straight man to Newman’s comic sidekick. Westerns have had sidekicks from the beginning, but instead of Gabby Hayes or Walter Brennan, with his funny limp, what makes Butch and Sundance seem brand spanking new is that they’re played by two blue-eyed, old Studio System leading men-types.

Along with everything else in 1969, the image of the leading man was getting mixed up. John Wayne wore an eye-patch, Dustin Hoffman was Ratso Rizzo, Peter Fonda was stoned, and John Voight played the dumb blonde. Newman and Redford came across as classic matinee idols – except they’re filled full of lead in the final freeze frame. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a crossover of Old Hollywood glamour with the New Hollywood death-of-heroes ending.

William Goldman’s original screenplay, based on eight years of research, is probably the most read screenplay ever. It was published as a mass market paperback when the movie came out and quickly became a best seller. This was during the time when novelizations of popular movies were cranked out by slapdash writers who changed the dialogue and storylines. But the best thing about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is the dialogue, so the publisher, or whoever, realized this is what the public want to read. Tens of thousands of Baby Boomers raised on movies zipped through the screenplay and decided this is what they wanted to do when they grew up. It looked so easy. And then Goldman included the screenplay in his Adventures in the Screen Trade which became The Book to read about the ups and downs of the Industry, summing it all up with, “Nobody knows anything.”

Goldman’s screenplay marks a turning point in screenwriting. He had written several successful novels, but his writer’s gut told him that the tale of Butch and Sundance was a movie. Back in the 60’s there were no how-to books on screenwriting, and it was hard to even find a script, since most of the actors tossed their copies after the production was over. So, Goldman learned about slug lines, indenting for dialogue and then made up the rest. He cut the action descriptions down to the bare bones and kept the dialogue – well, snappy.

The result is a screenplay that reads so quickly it’s almost like seeing the movie. The term “spec script” has been around for awhile, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is the very model of a spec script. A good, fast read that even an idiot could get through in an hour. The trick is that it makes the reader use their imagination. There is a lot of empty space, with only a line or two to setup the action. Yet it is impossible to read the script and not see every scene in the movie.

The amazing thing about the screenplay is how visual it is. Goldman wrote in terms of montage. Not to beat this into the ground, but in 1969 movies with long action sequences, mixed with occasional short riffs of dialogue, were not common, except for Alfred Hitchcock or David Lean epics. It’s a director’s tool, and most writers feel they got paid to write dialogue and not to suggest lingering camera shots over a dozen remote locations.

After all his years of research, one would expect that Goldman would be tempted to cramp as much of Butch and Sundance’s story as possible into two hours.  Instead Goldman selected three episodes from the outlaw’s lives and turned each one of these into humorous, Americana adventures. Each scene has a “button,” a little catch phrase to punctuate the moment. Pure vaudeville.

Sundance Kid: Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch?

Butch Cassidy: Kid, the next time I say, “Let’s go someplace like Bolivia,” let’s GO someplace like Bolivia.

Butch Cassidy: I couldn’t do that. Could you do that? Why can they do it? Who are those guys?

Having read his books, I know that Goldman’s favorite movie is Gunga Din. Knowing this gives an insight to how Goldman learned screenwriting – by watching movies, and not reading tattered old scripts, if he could find them. Gunga Din is broken into three ripping tales: A surprise attack and a wild shootout. A search for a lost treasure. And a final showdown against overwhelming odds. It’s done with rapid-fire dialogue, bigger-than-life action, and three heroic leading men, plus a side kick. Two of the leading men are Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., with Fairbanks playing straight man to Grant’s comic arrested development.

Going back to the thing about theatre, Goldman had plays produced before venturing into the movies. He writes like someone who has developed an ear for catchy dialogue by listening to audience’s reactions, and he has learned how to make characters endearing with well-timed laughs. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is broken into 3-acts with the train robberies, the chase by the super posse and the journey to Bolivia.

Butch Cassidy: You know, when I was a kid, I always thought I’d grow up to be a hero.

Sundance Kid: Well, it’s too late now.

Butch Cassidy: What’d you say that for? You didn’t have to say something like that.

There are a few scenes that have worn a little thin over the years, and sometimes the dialogue seems a tad too clever, but it endures because the sum is greater than all the parts. The characters are so likeable, the actors are having so much fun, and it is so damn pretty to look at that’s hard to find fault with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Except that it makes screenwriting look too easy. Goldman had written novels and plays, done years of research, and used a classic 3-act structure. He foreshadowed the tragic ending and knew enough about audiences to know that if Butch and Sundance were shot with hot lead in slow motion, like The Wild Bunch, that people would leave the theatre mad as hell.  He must have learned this from old movies. And he instinctively understood the balance between the written word and visual storytelling. Goldman knew his stuff. And he knew it long before the great proliferation of how-to-write-a-perfect-screenplay books.

He was a good enough writer to make it seem effortless, like anybody can do it, kind of like Fred Astaire dancing with a hat rack. Too often the reader or student doesn’t see the art or the solid construction in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Just the empty space, punch lines and explosions. But this has become The Screenplay to imitate. A quick read for a business that hates to read.

Goldman writes with envy about Ernest Lehman and his screenplay for North by Northwest. In the Old Studio writers were expected to describe scenes in detail, even suggesting camera shots, because they were under contract and the producer wanted a script that the director had to follow. What’s surprising is that even directors who developed their own stories, like Hitchcock, wanted the writer to flesh out the scenes.

Goldman uses the example of the crop duster scene from Lehman’s screenplay. Almost every twist and turn of this classic montage sequence is in his script, which goes on for several pages. Goldman says that Lehman’s version is even better than what Hitchcock shot. And this is a good argument. The irony is that today someone would thumb through Lehman’s script, see all those detailed descriptions, and think it was badly written because it doesn’t look like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The Godfather: Part II is a perfectly balanced epic. An epic because it covers sixty years in the lives of the Corleone family; and balanced because it intercuts the events of Vito Corleone becoming the Godfather, with the ruthless business intrigues of his son, Michael, who inherits the role of Godfather at the price of his soul.

Michael Corleone: I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies.

The Godfather: Part II is an extraordinary feat of realistic storytelling in the tradition of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. Imagine if Gone with the Wind was intercut with the story of Scarlett’s father and his rise to power in the Old South.

Of all the films on the WGA list, The Godfather: Part II is the one that most likely would not be made today because of its length, and because it is a prequel and a sequel. Modern studio marketing would insist that it be made as two separate movies. In reality, The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II are a trilogy, which was Francis Ford Coppola’s concept when he undertook the production. He wanted to cut them into chronological order for television.

Since Coppola struggled through the first film, with the studio axe hovering over his head daily, there is the feeling that he and Mario Puzo thought this might be their last waltz together. They wanted to tell a modern tragedy about how power can corrupt absolutely. Because of the restrictions of the Production Code, this is a story that had not been realistically explored in film before, except in Depression gangster melodramas.

Individually the stories are compelling but not great. The true greatness of The Godfather: Part II is the balance between the tales of father and son. The inspiration seems to come from Shakespeare, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” and from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which was on Coppola’s mind. It is imaginable in the final close-up of Michael that he is thinking, “The Horror! The Horror!”

Vito Corleone is forced as a child to immigrate to America to escape the vendettas in Sicily, which resulted in the brutal murder of his mother before his young eyes. After setbacks, he begins to financially provide for his growing family. But when Don Fanucci, a member of the Black Hand, attempts to extort money from him and his friends, this sets into motion the defining act of his life. He shoots Don Fanucci dead in a darken stairway and then calmly returns home to cradle his newborn son Michael, whispering that he loves him.

Vito Corleone dreams that Michael will become someone important and legitimate, not dirtied by the family business. He is a fair man who intercedes on people’s behalf when the law fails them. And he avoids any involvement in drug trafficking, fearing that such an association will harm Michael’s chances for a noble calling. When Vito is gunned down on the street – and later when his older brother Sonny and his beautiful Sicilian wife are murdered – Michael becomes head of the family.

These events happen in The Godfather but echo throughout The Godfather: Part II with the rise of Vito Corleone as respectable businessman, told with touches of humor, and Michael becoming obsessed with assassinating anyone he considers an enemy. In the course of his business dealings, Michael grows so cold-hearted that Fredo, his brother, Connie, his sister, and Kay, his wife, grow to hate him and see him as a monster.

Kay Corleone: Oh, Michael. Michael, you are blind. It wasn’t a miscarriage. It was an abortion. An abortion, Michael. Just like our marriage is an abortion. Something that’s unholy and evil. I didn’t want your son, Michael. I wouldn’t bring another one of your sons into this world! It was an abortion, Michael. It was a son, Michael. A son! And I had it killed because this must all end!  I know now that it’s over. I knew it then. There would be no way, Michael, no way you could ever forgive me – not with this Sicilian thing that’s been going on for 2,000 years.

Both stories end with acts of revenge. Vito Corleone returns to Sicily and kills Don Ciccio, the man who murdered his mother. A brutal but understandable revenge. But Michael’s obsession drives him to kill three men who can no longer harm him. One is dying of natural causes with only a few weeks to leave. One is in prison, silenced by fears of what might happen to his family. And one is his own brother Fredo, who is sick with grief for what he has done in the past and only wants to spend his days fishing.

Connie Corleone: Michael, I hated you for so many years. I think that I did things to myself, to hurt myself so that you’d know – that I could hurt you. You were just being strong for all of us the way Papa was. And I forgive you. Can’t you forgive Fredo? He’s so sweet and helpless without you.

But Michael’s actions are not what his “Papa” would have wanted. Vito Corleone is forced into a life of crime, but does everything he can in the name of his family’s happiness. If he had not been shot, then Michael might have become a great man. Instead, Michael becomes everything his father would have hated. He rules without compassion, destroys the love within the family, and has his brother needlessly murdered.

Separately, Michael’s story becomes almost agonizing to watch. And the father’s tale is beautifully told but without great significance. Together they show how one act of fate can transform the American Dream into a nightmare.

From the many behind-the-scenes stories about the making of this film, the original intercutting was more frequent, instead of the longer sequences in the final version. Whatever transpired, the end result is a masterwork of storytelling. There is no other film like it. Telling parallel stories is the trick that provides the dramatic structure. A trick that might be a one-shot-wonder, since such an ambitious structure will probably be impossible to pass through the eye of the marketing needle again.

And this is the only story trick that can be learned from The Godfather: Part II. The scene choices, complexity of characters, and dialogue in the screenplay cannot be learned. They are an example of the incredible realism that comes from knowing the subject matter, a lifetime love of dramatic literature, and a gift for listening. Coppola and Puzo allowed each scene to evolve naturally, without hurrying the pace. The result is a glimpse into a world that if it did not exist this way before – it will forever be seen this way because of the quality of writing. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Osgood Fielding III: Well, nobody’s perfect.

This is one of the most famous punch lines in any comedy. But why? Is the line that funny? Is it because the way Joe E. Brown, who plays Osgood, delivers the line? Is it because of the way Jack Lemmon, who plays Jerry in a bad blonde wig, reacts to Osgood’s deadpan face? Is it because Osgood is so in love that when he meets his ideal tango partner it doesn’t make any difference that she is a he? Is it because they just escaped Chicago gangsters after a crazy, wild chase?

Or is it because Billy Wilder took the advice of his beloved mentor Ernst Lubitsch: “Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.”

The answer is – yes. Some Like It Hot is one of Wilder’s many perfect movies. It’s the perfect line. It’s the perfect cast. It’s the perfect ending to a screwball comedy. And it is always wise to listen to Lubitsch.

Screwball comedies were the cat’s meow in the 30’s and 40’s. There was The Thin Man, It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, Bringing Up Baby, Ninotchka, His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire and dozens more. Part of the formula for screwball comedy is the attraction of opposites. Out-of-work newspaper man meets rich society dame on the run. Beautiful but humorless Communist dame meets Capitalist romantic in Paris. A gangster’s dame meets handsome, shy bookworm.

The sudden rise of screwball comedies came about when the studios signed off on the Production Code. The Code stated that no screen kiss could last longer than three seconds. Couples could not share a bed, even if the characters were married. There could be no one-night flings or extramarital affairs. And fallen women had to pay a terrible personal price for their carnal sins. In other words, sex disappeared from the movies.

But if a man and a woman couldn’t eye each other from across a crowded room, meet, fall passionately in love, and have sex – what was left? Well, they could be forced to spend time with each other, reluctantly becoming friends, share a few madcap adventures, and then fall passionately in love. Or, even more revolutionary, married couples, like Nick and Nora Charles, could be best buddies, kid around with each other, and work together solving mysteries.

The restrictions of the Code arguably brought romance to the screen. For the set-up there had to be a conflict of some sort that would detour the normal course of human desire for a few reels. In It Happened One Night a reporter, who just got fired, gets on the same bus as a runaway society woman. She is arrogant and he is a wise-cracker. They don’t get along, but he needs her story and she needs his help to get to New York. Slowly they fall in love.

In Some Like It Hot, Joe, a Romeo saxophone player, has to don a dress, along with his buddy Jerry, to hide out from Chicago gangsters after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. They get a gig in an all-girls band, which happens to have “Sugar” Kane Kowalczyk, the sexiest blonde in the world, and the lead singer. Sugar confesses that her weak spot is saxophone players. But Joe is now Josephine, and if he blows his cover as a woman the gangsters will find him and fill him full of lead. So, Josephine and Sugar become best girlfriends.

Some Like It Hot is based on the 1935 French comedy by Fanfare d’Amour by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan. Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond (on their second film together) added gangsters and set it in Chicago during Prohibition. By putting it in this era, with a hot Roaring 20’s jazz score, and shooting it in black-and-white, they were free to use the story tricks of screwball comedy – adding a few of their own. A male musician on the run from the mob dressed as a woman meets the right woman. A male musician on the run from the mob dressed as a woman meet the right man.

The Production Code was still enforce in 1959, but after The War it had begun to relax its iron-glove grip on how sex could be depicted on the big screen, especially when film noir swung open the bedroom doors.

There were constant cat-and-mouse games between directors and the Hays Office. Sometimes suggestive scenes were written into scripts knowing the Hays Office would demand they be removed. So agreements were reached to cut the “indecent” scene but keep another slightly provocative one. Or, as another example, a passionate scene would end with a kiss and a fade out. In the next scene the couple would be smoking – and the audience would quickly fill in what happened when the lights went out.

There are many things in Some Like It Hot that would not have passed the Code during the Old Studio days, including probably the story. By the late 30’s the gangster genre, once the biggest box office attraction, had almost disappeared from the screen. The violent murders in Some Like It Hot would not been allowed.  

Most of Jack Lemmon’s dialogue with Marilyn Monroe in the sleeping car would have been cut. Tony Curtis would not have been allowed to raise his leg when Monroe kissed him. And Osgood Fielding III’s punch line probably would have been removed – because it implies whatever the heck it implies. There are scores of small things that won’t have passed back then.

Some Like It Hot is a 30’s screwball comedy without the restrictions of the early Code. This is probably one of the reasons the film holds up so well. As director, Wilder gave it the gritty look of a Warner Bros. Depression Era gangster movie, casting it with old stars from this genre like George Raft and Pat O’Brian. As a writer, Wilder was able to get away with sight gags, sexual implications, and double entendres.   

Sugar: Story of my life. I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.  

When he was writing his early scripts, like Ball of Fire, many of the lines he gave Marilyn Monroe would have been cut.

Joe: I’m afraid it may take a little longer.

Sugar: It’s not how long it takes, it’s who’s taking you.

Wilder’s decision to write the part of Sugar for Marilyn Monroe was brave and brilliant. Brave because he had already made one film with her, The Seven Year Itch, and knew because of her emotional state of mind that she would be trouble. And he knew there was no one else like her. Cary Grant once said that everyone wants to be Cary Grant – I want to be Cary Grant. This fits Monroe. On screen she was an innocent child with a sexy body. But her private life was famously unhappy.

Wilder wrote for the image of Marilyn Monroe, and I believe that her screen legacy endures because of her performance as Sugar. Wilder wrote a character that should have the world in her hand, but somehow always gets mixed up with the wrong men and is looking for something she can’t find. This is the popular image of Monroe, and Wilder gave her the happy ending that she wouldn’t have in real life.

It is said that Marilyn Monroe brought sex back to the Hollywood movies. If so, then Sugar is her defining role. Monroe’s persona is that she desirable but naively unaware of her own sexual powers. She could say lines loaded with naughty undertones and get away with them because of her breathy baby-speak.

Sugar: I don’t care how rich he is, as long as he has a yacht, his own private railroad car, and his own toothpaste.

Knowing he was writing for Monroe, Wilder could then play tricks with traditional storylines. Normally there is a main character that encounters a conflict and needs to take action to resolve it. Some Like It Hot has two main characters: Joe and Jerry. They witness a bloody gangland murder and have to go on the run together. They can’t play their sax and bass in a jazz band because there is a hit out on them – unless the jazz band is all-girls. They find such a touring gig and overnight become Daphne and Josephine.

Joe and Jerry, in another tip of the hat to old Hollywood, are a comic team. Joe is the handsome straight man and Jerry is the comic sidekick, in the tradition of Bing Cosby and Bob Hope. While catching the train to get out of Chicago they run into Sugar. Both men both are immediately attracted.

Jerry: Will you look at that! Look how she moves! It’s like Jell-O on springs. Must have some sort of built-in motor or something. I tell you, it’s a whole different sex!

Marilyn Monroe doesn’t show up until twenty-five minutes into the film. Her memorable appearance, as she jumps away in fright from the steam of the engine, is the end of act one. Her entrance creates the set-up for the story. The conflict is that two guys have to pass themselves off as female musicians to stay alive, and they just happen to run into the blonde bombshell of all blonde bombshells.

Wilder then pulls two tricks that are pure genius. Joe and Jerry can’t seduce Sugar, because this would give away their true identities, which Sweet Sue, the leader of the band, is already suspicious about. But seducing Sugar becomes an unspoken contest between the two old friends.

Jerry, the sidekick, makes the first move by befriending Sugar and tries to get her drunk in his sleeping compartment. Unfortunately for Jerry, what would under normal circumstances be his dream come true – turns into a comic nightmare. All the girls cram into his compartment. As the party gets wild, Jerry becomes overly excited and pulls the emergency cord.

When they reach their destination in Miami, the land of millionaires, Jerry still has the advantage because Sugar treats him as her bosom buddy. Joe, played by Tony Curtis, is the right match for Sugar since she admittedly has a thing for saxophone players. But he doesn’t have a chance as along as he is Josephine.

Joe finds some nice clothes and round glasses and shows up on the beach as Junior, a Cary Grant sounding millionaire. Sugar is instantly attracted to Junior, because this is her little girl dream. Now, Joe has the upper hand, but he had a problem – there is no way he can pass himself off as a millionaire. He’s flat broke.

This is when Fate steps in. Wilder and Diamond needed to create a situation that gives Junior a yacht. So, they invent Osgood Fielding III. As played by Joe E. Brown, who back in the early 30’s was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Osgood is the ultimate dirty old man, plus one of the sweetest guys in the world. The trick is that the audience can never dislike Osgood or find him repulsive, because Wilder knew if this happened the last line of the movie won’t work.

Who does Osgood go for? Daphne. And what does Osgood have? A yacht. When Joe finds outs, he forces Jerry to go out on a date with Osgood so he can take Sugar to the yacht. And why does this work? Because Wilder knew that Lemmon and Brown were a match made in screwball heaven. The audience finds this pairing so funny that they never think it is a mechanical plot point to get Joe a place to seduce Sugar.

As Wilder says, “The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.” And once on the yacht, Wilder tosses in another plot point. One that is completely illogical but inspired. Sugar has found her yacht and millionaire (so she thinks) and is ready to be seduced. All that Joe has to do is turn out the lights. But Junior has a problem.

Wilder knew that making love to Marilyn Monroe is the dream of most of the guys in the audience. But he also knew there is no payoff if this happened. If Joe seduces Sugar, then suddenly the audience won’t like Joe and might begin to think of the real life Marilyn and her real life man problems. But if Sugar seduces Joe, now this has possibilities. And if Junior can’t make love to a woman because his sweetheart fell to her death in the Grand Canyon. This is funny.

More importantly this follows the rule of screwball comedies: If the man and woman get to know each other, it gives love a chance to bloom. In Some Like It Hot this works for both leading men. Joe sees what a good person Sugar is though the eyes of Junior. And Jerry sees what a swell guy Osgood is through the eyes of Daphne.

Joe: But, you’re not a girl! You’re a guy, and, why would a guy wanna marry a guy?

Jerry: Security!

Some Like It Hot is a great example of reimaging a genre. Billy Wilder turned to one of his favor forms of comedy, took it all apart, and then put it back together like new.

 

The play’s the thing. From the top ten screenplays on the list, seven have writers who got their start in theatre, dramatic radio or live television. Casablanca is based on the play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” and Howard Koch wrote the famous “War of the Worlds” broadcast for Orson Welles’ Mercury Players on the Air.

Francis Ford Coppola has family roots in theatre. Welles was already a legend on radio and stage when he flew to Hollywood to make Citizen Kane. All About Eve is based on a short story and radio play titled “The Wisdom of Eve” about the world of theatre, and Joseph Mankiewicz grew up in this world. Woody Allen wrote gags for the live Sid Caesar Show and has stage hits, including Play It Again, Sam.

And three-time Academy Award winner (all solo credits) Paddy Chayefsky was part of the Golden Age of Television. This is a much talked about era that is now a distant memory for Baby Boomers. Today most people probably haven’t seen any of the shows that were recorded live on The Goodyear Television Playhouse or Playhouse 90.  Chayefsky’s first Oscar was for Marty, based on his acclaimed television script. His second was for Hospital. And his third Oscar was for Network, a black comedy that foretells the decline of objective news and the coming of reality television.

Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, I. A. L. Diamond, the Epstein brothers, and Herman Mankiewicz were influenced by the revolution happening in theatre in the early 20^th Century, which started in Russia and Europe and then centered in New York during the 1940’s and 50’s. For the most part, playwrights did not have to deal with the kind of censorship associated with the Production Code. Throughout the 50 Greatest Screenplay list are notable playwrights like Robert Bolt, Murray Schisgal, Budd Schulberg, Horton Foote, Sidney Howard, Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Graham Greene, Clifford Odets, Philip Barry, Tom Stoppard, William Goldman, Preston Sturges, and four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert E. Sherwood.

There names are a reminder of how close theatre and film once were. Live radio and television dramas were part of the stepping stones to these two art forms, allowing a generation of writers to learn and refine their skills going from plays to television to movies. The next comment might evoke some arguments, but this rewarding system of learning the tricks of storytelling for mass audiences seems to be gone forever.

The only place today for this diversified yet similar hard-knocks learning experience is in schools. However, most film and theatre departments are not only separate but at philosophical odds with each other. One explanation is that colleges and universities tend to foster a not-for-profit mentality toward a theatre career, and reluctantly acknowledge the for-profit world of film as a real art form. The business of film is not taught because most professors in the arts are not trained or educated in this cut-throat, big budget profession. Thus from a lack of practical knowledge, many in higher education see film as the grim reaper to classical theatre instead of its natural extension.

A film is made up of scenes and acts, just like a play. Director Howard Hawks once observed that a good movie has three great scenes and no bad scenes. Actually he said “good scenes” but I changed it to great, because what standouts in films are the truly memorable scenes. Moviegoers have favor moments from films, which perhaps touched them in some way. The farewell at the airport in Casablanca. Michael Corleone telling his brother, “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!” Atticus Finch leaving the courtroom in To Kill a Mockingbird. Toto pulling back the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. Or Howard Beale shouting “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Network has three great scenes and no bad scenes. It is a creation of a highly skilled playwright who understands the dynamics of movies. Every scene is a perfectly composed mini-drama building to a great conflict, a great turning point, and a great conclusion. Yet I am willing to bet cold, hard cash that if the author’s name on Network was changed to John Doe, and it made the rounds of producers today, it would be rejected as overwritten.

And it is. Magnificently overwritten. Brilliantly overwritten. What makes it work on the screen is that the actors obviously knew this was a once-in-a-life-time dialogue and each one sold it with a realistic, career topping performance. From his years in theatre, Chayefsky understood how far he could push his intoxicating celebration of words – with the right cast. His characters have street-smart intelligence in a shark infested world. The late, great Sidney Lumet, who also came from theatre, was respected as an actor’s director. He understood that satire works best if everyone reacts to the situations naturally, like this crazy stuff happens every day.

Network and A treetcar Named Desire are the only two films with three actors winning Academy Awards. Network had five actors nominated, Streetcar had four, and All About Eve had five nominations but only one win. So, advice to producers: The next time you get a screenplay you think is overwritten, call in a few actors and let them have a crack at the dialogue.

Network is two interwoven stories: Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is news anchorman who is fired and announces he is going to commit suicide on the air. And Max Schumacher (William Holden) is Howard’s best friend and a married man on the verge of a mid-life crisis. However, it is Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), the ambitious vice president in charge of programming, who turns Howard in a mad prophet television star and turns Max’s life upside down.

Diana is the key character in the film. Without her Howard would not been allowed to return to the air, and Max would have gone home to his wife to write his memoirs. Diana is the new television generation who literally gets turned on by ratings. Deep down she’s an ice woman who was raised, as Max says, on Bugs Bunny. She is attracted to the legends of news television (Max), but her mass media genes instinctively tell her that viewers are bored silly by stoic anchormen and will flock to anything that smacks of entertainment (Howard). Without Diana the story would not move forward.

Max is salt-of-the-earth, a pioneer of the Golden Age who doesn’t realize he has helped create a media monster that can’t be controlled. But Howard is the fun character to write because he goes divinely and articulately mad. Madness is a great writing trick. Hamlet was mad – or was he? The Mad Hatter. Norman Bates. Dr. Strangelove. Gollum. Hannibal Lecter. And Howard Beale. Mad people can say things in the most florid language and the audience buys it – because this is the way mad people speak, right? What’s the fun of writing a mad man if he can’t be imbued with twisted, uncanny insights and a poet’s effortless command of words?

Chayefsky early plays are realistic slices of life. Marty is a celebration of the common guy and his search for love. Marty has a happy ending that is uplifting and optimistic. But by the time Chayefsky got to The Hospital he had turned into a tough cynic using works like boxing gloves. These two sides of Chayefsky are in Network. Max is cut from real cloth with flesh-and-blood family and emotional problems. And Howard is Chayefsky’s angry inter-demon raging against the hypocrites of the modern impersonal world.

Without Max to counterbalance the story, Howard might have been a one scene wonder. Chayefsky pulls back the curtain on Max’s personal life, but there is only one moment where the audience sees Howard alone at night. This is balancing act is important in satire. The absurdity  of the situation can quickly wear thin on the audience. In Dr. Strangelove,  Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake is the counterbalance to General Jack Ripper. And President Merkin Muffley (in remarkable multiple performances by Peter Sellers) is counterbalance to both General “Buck” Turgidson and Dr. Strangelove.

The subtle craftsmanship of Network is often overlooked because of Howard Beale’s mad scenes. Chayefsky knew he could go over the top with these scenes if the people around Howard had their feet on the ground. Chayefsky also knew that the things Howard was shouting about were the real issues of the time, and remarkably – chillingly – things haven’t changed. The film feels like it was made yesterday.

Howard Beale: I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.” Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, “I’m a human being, Goddamnit! My life has value!” So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad! You’ve got to say, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

This is an almost impossible scene to top, which is always a concern in storytelling. If Howard just “run out of bullshit” this screenplay won’t be in the top ten. Chayefsky had great scenes planned for the second act and the third – each perfectly logical in their complete absurdity. Howard becomes the mad prophet of the air-ways. His show is a hit and Diana is at the top of the network hill. But he is a prophet without a real God. Howard finds his God when he interferes with a multi-million dollar international transaction and the chairman of the news company, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), calls him into the corporate conference room for a one-on-one sermon on the mount.

Arthur Jensen: The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that… perfect world… in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard Beale: Why me?

Arthur Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.

Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

After this visitation from the God of Big Business, Howard beings preaching the corporate commandments to the television masses.  Looking directly into the camera lens, he tells viewers they are little more than wet ink on a ledger. His ratings plummet and a meeting is called to address the programming crisis. In a scene that is casual, like any informal office meeting, a decision is reached and enacted.

Frank Hackett: Well, the issue is: Shall we kill Howard Beale, or not? I’d like to get some more opinions on that.

Diana Christensen: I don’t see we have any options, Frank. Let’s kill the son-of-a-bitch.

Howard is shot dead at the beginning of his TV show, thus becoming the first known person to be killed because of “lousy ratings.” Network ends with a close-up of his lifeless face. All this began because of his announcement to commit suicide on air, so ironically he got his wish – a tidy bit of story symmetry.  It’s not a happy ending, certainly not like Marty, but with satire a skilled writer conditions the audience throughout the movie not to expect a Busby Berkeley finale. It is the right ending, skillfully built to with three great scenes and 100% free of bad scenes.

Network was beat out for Best Picture by Rocky. It came out in 1976, at the height of the Hollywood New Wave, when moviegoers expected downer endings. After a decade of political assassinations, Watergate and the Vietnam War, this was how art imitated life. But with Rocky and Star Wars the following year, all this began to change. It’s possible that a year later Network would not have gotten made. With corporations, as predicted by Howard Beale, seeing profits from actions pictures and sequels it became an unwritten Hollywood law not to kill of heroes. This is like telling Shakespeare that someone has to rush in at the last second of Hamlet with an antidote to the poison because there is going to be Hamlet II: The Ghost Avenger.

Perhaps Network signifies a turning point. For the two decades leading up to Network, people attended some form of theatre on average of once a month. Today it’s roughly every 18 months. Looking over the 50 Greatest Screenplays, only fourteen were written after Paddy Chayefsky’s masterful word-fest, and two of these, Tootsie and Shakespeare in Love, are about theatre and live television. The unheralded tradition of theatre being the training ground for writers who can create in both venues seems to be running on empty.

Without Lumet and the incredible cast, Chayefsky might have been accused of having “too many words.” But the words are to-die-for. And it’s funny as hell. Chayefsky, with his background in theatre, spent years listened to audiences responding to his story pacing and speech rhythms.  He knew that audiences were infinitely smarter than “raised on Bugs Bunny” Hollywood producers gave them credit for. What keeps Network ticking is that it hasn’t aged. Like with Citizen Kane and The Godfather, the characters and themes are the enduring stuff of great plays.

A few years ago I saw Ace in the Hole, the film Billy Wilder made after Sunset Blvd. I had seen it as a kid on local TV, but it was so badly cut up that I actually remember it having a happy ending. It was a film that I really wanted to like – but just couldn’t. I noticed Wilder had a different writing partner on it, but at the time it didn’t occur to me this made any difference. Ace in the Hole was part of Wilder’s golden period, so I convinced myself that even his miscalculations were interesting.

Yet the differences between Ace in the Hole (which was a major box office failure) and Sunset Blvd. are so profound it became a crazy puzzle that I kept trying to piece together. Ace in the Hole was the first film Wilder did without Charles Brackett, his long time partner. Together they wrote thirteen screenplays, including Ninotchka, Ball of Fire, Hold Back the Dawn, Lost Weekend, A Foreign Affair, and Sunset Blvd. They were nominated five times for Academy Awards, winning twice. During these years the only notable script that Wilder wrote without Brackett was Double Indemnity, when he teamed up with pulp fiction legend Raymond Chandler.

None of his films with Brackett are as dark and cynical as Ace in the Hole. The big thing missing from Ace in the Hole is humor. It’s about a reporter who lets a man stay trapped in a mine (his ace in the hole) to milk the headlines out of the story. However, Sunset Blvd. is about a B-list screenwriter who is murdered by an over-the-hill silent star who he was a sex slave to, in the mansion where her ex-husband is the butler. On the surface, both of these stories are very heavy going. Yet Sunset Blvd. is full of clever humor, with characters that are sympathetic and strangely endearing.

Perhaps it was fortuitous that Montgomery Cliff dropped out of Sunset Blvd. two weeks before shooting began. Wilder scrambled around and found William Holden, who finally got a shot at a great role. Cliff would have been different in the role. And since Wilder and Brackett were still working on the script when production started, Cliff’s performance might have influenced the tone of the writing.

Cliff never seemed to be comfortable with comedy, not the kind of comedy that springs naturally from the character. His best roles are A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity, and he played the doomed soul to perfection. However, his characters rarely cracked jokes, and that’s all Joe Gillis does. He makes a joke of everything – including his own death.

Joe Gillis (narrating): Before you hear it all distorted and blown out of proportion. Before those Hollywood columnists get their hands on it. Maybe you’d like to hear the facts – the whole truth. If so, you’ve come to the right party. You see, the body of a young man was found floating in the pool of her mansion, with two shots in his back and one in his stomach. Nobody important really. Just a movie writer with a couple of B-pictures to his credit. The poor dope – he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool. Only the price was a little high.

Sunset Blvd. uses a character narration that trumps all narrations. Gillis is the dead man in the swimming pool, shot full of holes, but telling the tale of his demise. He is matter-of-fact about his circumstances, which makes his voice from beyond seem oddly natural. It’s the perfect story trick to show how bizarre things can get in Hollywood.

Wilder liked using narrations, especially with characters that had a dark secret they wanted to get off their chest. A voiceover creates an immediate connection with the audience, making each person feel a little special, because it seems like the character is talking directly to them. In The Apartment, C.C. Baxter tells about his “little problem” of not being able to get into his apartment at night. In Double Indemnity, Walter Neff confesses to a scheme with a dame that went terribly wrong. And in Sunset Blvd., Joe Gillis gives the lowdown on how he ended up a corpse.

Sometimes a character’s narration is a bookend for the opening and final curtain of a story. But Wilder uses Gillis’ narration throughout the film, which increases the irony of him being dead. Gillis is a bit of a smart-ass about his sad fate – but not resentful. And this is one of the reasons that Sunset Blvd. is a great story. There are is no real villain. It is a tragic tale of plain old bad luck, about a “poor dope” that walks through the wrong door at the wrong time.

Joe Gillis (narrating): A neglected house gets and unhappy look. This one had it in spades. It was like that old woman in Great Expectations, that Miss Havisham and her rotting wedding dress and her torn veil, taking it out on the world – because she had been given the go-by.

The reference to Great Expectations is a key factor in the way the story is told. In Sunset Blvd., Gillis’ narration begins after the fact. He is already dead in the swimming pool when it opens. Since he’s a B-picture writer, there is the feeling that he is pitching a story idea to the audience – after all, this will be his final script. He’s upbeat about it, like he would be if a producer was listening, tossing in slang terms such as “go-by” and “you’ve come to the right party.”

If you know your Charles Dickens, then you know he is the master of chance encounters. This is a story devise that can turn into predictable melodrama if not smartly used. Much of the delight of reading Dickens is for the wonderful characters that Oliver Twist or David Copperfield or Pip chance upon into during their journeys.

In Great Expectations, young Pip is invited to the decaying mansion of Miss Havisham, who hasn’t changed from her wedding dress since the day she was left at the alter. Later in the story Pip comes into a large inheritance, and he thinks it is from Miss Havisham. But it’s not. It is from a chance encounter Pip had with a runaway convict, who was eternally grateful for the small boy’s assistance on a cold night.

If Shakespeare was punching out scripts in Hollywood, then Citizen Kane would be his cup of tea. And if Dickens was around, he would have teamed up with Wilder on Sunset Blvd. By having Gillis narrate after he is murdered establishes a story environment where anything can happen, and gives Wilder and Brackett the opportunity to craft some of the best dialogue ever.

Joe Gillis is down on his luck. He’s about to be kicked out of his cheap apartment and hides his car so it wouldn’t be repossessed. Out of desperation he goes to Paramount Studios to pitch a story idea. There he happens to met Betty Schaefer, a studio reader who has given his story treatment a bad coverage. The pitch goes south, and he asks the producer for a loan. But the producer ends by telling Gillis about his own personal financial problems.

While trying to explore other options, Gillis sees two men from the finance company and a car chase ensues up Sunset Blvd.  He escapes when his tire happens to blow out and he turns into a driveway that happens to have an empty garage. He sees the neglected house and hears the voice of silent movie queen Norma Desmond for the first time. She happens to be waiting for someone to bury her dead chimpanzee and mistakes Gillis for the undertaker. However, when she finds out he’s a writer she explodes with pent-up anger and frustration.

Norma Desmond:  Words, words, more words! Well, you’ll make a rope of words and strangle this business! With a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongues!

Wilder and Brackett create a “divine irony” for these two opposites to come together.  Norma needs the services of a writer, especially a young, good looking one, for her “return” to the silver screen. Gillis happens to be broke and needs a gig. He sees an opportunity to make some easy money by punching up this crazy lady’s potboiler – and she sees an opportunity of having a professional writer get her script into shape for Mr. DeMille. It is the perfect chance encounter.

Billy Wilder said in one of his many interviews, “The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you’re as a writer.”

There is no better example of how to cover up plot points than Sunset Blvd. A plot point is an unromantic, mechanical term, but stories would not exist without them. In Casablanca, Ilsa has to walk into Rick’s bar. In The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone has to be shot. In Chinatown, J. J. Gittes has to fall for the short con. And Joe Gillis has to meet Norma Desmond when he is flat broke.

If he wasn’t being chased, this wouldn’t have happened. If he had gotten an advance on his story idea at the studio, this wouldn’t have happened. And if Norma’s chimp hadn’t passed away, this wouldn’t have happened.

Gillis can’t use his car, and he can’t go back to his apartment because people are looking for him. He spends the night in the guest bedroom and in the morning finds his clothes there. He’s indigent at first, but then is reluctantly grateful to Norma for getting him out of a jam. He says he will repay her out of his salary, and starts to work on the script. End of act one.

“If you are having a problem with the third act,” Wilder says, “the real problem is in the first act.” At the end of the first act, Joe Gillis has a writing job, the patronage of a wealthy older woman, and the services of a Prussian butler named Max. So, life has taken a good turn for Gillis – oh, wait a second, he’s dead at the end of third act, isn’t he?

What goes wrong? To give away a plot point, it turns out to be the green-eyed monster jealousy. Another woman comes into the picture – but not just any woman, the right woman who brings out Gillis’ writing talent. This plays into Norma Desmond’s greatest fear – being deserted. She has been deserted by her fans and lives cut off from the world in her mansion. Chance has brought a handsome man – a writer – into her life. She is still beautiful, but older – and being old is sin in Hollywood for a woman.

If Gillis hadn’t pulled into her driveway, then she never would have gotten her script ready for DeMille. She might have died with her memories, and Max would have loyally – lovingly – kept part of her dream alive. Gillis arrival gives her hope – and it gives him more time, since he was on the verge of returning to Dalton, Ohio when all this happened.

For Gillis to wind up floating face down in the swimming pool there needs to be another series of chance encounters. These begin when he lets Norma buy him expensive gifts and the finest clothes. On New Year’s Eve she gives a party with an orchestra and Max servicing champagne – just for the two of them. Realizing he is about to be turned into a gigolo – what they now call a boy toy – he leaves Norma and goes to a friend’s apartment with the hope of crashing on his couch for a few weeks. The friend is giving a real party, with struggling but merry young hopefuls. At the party he runs into Betty Schaefer.

Ever since the meeting at Paramount, she has been thinking about him and found some of his old stories. One of the stories has an idea she likes, and offers to help him develop it.  This would be a real job for a studio picture, and not a phony Biblical epic. But at this moment Gillis learns that Norma has tried to kill herself. He rushes back to her bedside, truly concern – and falls into her seductive embrace. End of act two.

At the beginning of the final act, the swimming pool has been filled and Gillis has settled into a life with Norma. Then the seemingly impossible happens, she gets a call from Paramount. Believing it is Cecil B. DeMille contacting her about the script, she has Max get the Isotta Fraschini ready.

 The phone call results in a plot point that is so elegant, just as Wilder recommends, its repercussions are almost invisible to the audience. The call isn’t from DeMille. It’s from the prop department at Paramount wanting to borrow the Isotta Fraschini. And since the call wasn’t from DeMille, there is no pass waiting for Norma at the gate. But – by chance – she recognizes an old security guard named Jonesy, and he treats her with the dignity she was expecting. She goes to DeMille’s sound stage, where he is busy shooting a scene from an upcoming costume drama.

Joe Gillis tells Norma to go in alone, this is her big moment. He watches as he is warmly greeted by DeMille. While they wait, Max describes where Norma’s dressing rooms were and where his office was located. Then – by chance – Gillis sees Betty Schaefer and follows her to a small office. During the brief scene, her enthusiasm about working with him on a script gets him going. He tosses out story ideas and teases with her. To be on the studio lot is a dream he had almost abandon – just like Norma. And out of nowhere, he has an attractive, smart, well-ground woman wanting to work with him.

But it’s the meeting between DeMille and Norma Desmond that is critical to the final scenes. For the first time Sunset Blvd. breaks from the framework of Gillis’ narration. It is so subtle that the audience doesn’t think about it. Up until this point, all the action has been centered on Gillis and the chance encounters that brought him into Norma’s life. But when Norma is meeting with DeMille, he is upstairs with Betty Schaefer. Gillis doesn’t see what happens on the sound stage. But the audience does.

For one scene, the movie shifts to DeMille’s point-of-view.  DeMille discovers the confusion with the car, and realizes that Norma has mistaken the call from the studio as an invitation to talk about her “awful script.” It is an inspired moment. DeMille turns out to be understanding about the terrible irony of Norma’s situation. A moment that is even more profound because Wilder uses a legendary director playing opposite Gloria Swanson, a legendary silent star whose career ended with the talkies.

First Assistant Director: I can tell her you’re all tied up in the projection room. I can give her the brush.

Cecil B. DeMille: Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn’t that enough?

During this scene, there is another chance encounter. As Norma sits in DeMille’s chair a microphone brushes against the feather in her hat and she pushes it away. Her action gets the attention of an old electrician nicknamed Hog-eye. He refocuses a light on Norma and calls out her name. In the bright pool of light, members of the cast recognize Norma and surround her as true fans of the once great movie queen.

In this moment, the audience sees that Norma is the real thing, a true idol of old Hollywood. More importantly, the audience sees her violability from the decades of loneliness she has endured since sound came in. In this scene, she becomes real to the audience – something that Joe Gillis’ narration never allows her to be. Wilder and Brackett intends for the audience, through the point-of-view of DeMille, to have a sad admiration for Norma’s refusal to give up. After all, she just wants to work again – a very real emotion that almost everybody has experienced at some point.

The audience would never have seen human side of Norma without the chance encounter with DeMille. And she never would have made the journey to the studio without the chance encounter with Joe Gillis. By showing this scene without Gillis, the audience has privileged knowledge, and realizes that Norma’s dream of a return will never happen. As lonely as she was, her dream had kept her alive. And the visit to Paramount gives Gillis the opportunity to work a good script, which never would have happened if he caught the bus to Dalton like he was planning.

There are no villains, not in the tradition of melodramas, just plain old bad luck. As in Dickens, the film is full of chance encounters, or, to use the mechanical term, plot points to keep the story moving forward. Yet there is never a moment that feels artificial or contrived, because Wilder and Brackett did them with subtly and elegance.

In studying Wilder’s films, a lot of attention is placed on structure, like it was some sort of magic wane out of Harry Potter. In one of his interviews, Wilder says that screenplays are nothing but structure. There’s no argument. Structure is important because it’s the skeleton of the story. But these story tricks would seem false if the characters didn’t seem real.

The first encounter between Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond is one of the best written and most quoted scenes in any motion picture. Reading books on structure and the use of myths in storytelling is a useful guide. But great dialogue is pure talent. Listen is the best advice. Nevertheless, there is one trick, which might be called Method Writing. On the simplest level, dialogue comes from a character’s background.

Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.

Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

Gillis writes B-picture, but he probably talks better than he writes. The guess is that he has read most of the masters, but prefers Mickey Spillane. He never misses an opportunity for a wise-crack.

Joe Gillis: Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.

Norma has lives in the past, a past that was once rich with international personalities. Like an actress, she thinks about what she is going to say if she ever gets a chance for a return to the screen – but she never goes out. She is trapped in time and talks in catch phrases like an old Hollywood press release.

Norma Desmond: They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who’ve we got now? Some nobodies!

The contrast between Norma and Gillis has similarities to Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois. Gillis is an average guy that uses sarcasm and slang instead of purple prose.

Joe Gillis (narrating): Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted. It’s dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out… ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you’re dead.

And Norma speaks the language of a romantic bygone era, which, after so many years of solitude, is mostly make-believe.

Norma Desmond (to the news reel cameras): And I promise you I’ll never desert you again because after Salome we’ll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark! All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

Music rises. Fade out.

Annie Hall is the quintessential film on the WGA list in terms of “personal filmmaking,” a term associated with the French New Wave. It is a screenplay co-written by the director who is also the lead actor – a triple threat. Switch Woody with Dustin Hoffman or Robert DeNiro, both doing off-beat characters in the 1970’s, or replace Woody with Martin Scorsese or Sidney Lumet, both New York directors, and Annie Hall would have been a very different movie. (Think The King of Comedy.)

Annie Hall is presented as an autobiographical romantic comedy, but instead of Woody Allen the main character’s name is Alvy Singer. The directors associated with this style of film – it hasn’t really been done enough to be called a genre – are Francois Truffaut and Federico Fellini. With The 400 Blows, Truffaut casted young Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel, his screen persona, using the actor four other times as the character grew up. But the most famous example is Fellini who cast Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita and 8 ½ as his handsome screen alter ego.

If Citizen Kane is the most difficult screenplay to imitate without comparison, then Annie Hall should be the easiest – but this hasn’t happened. A personal film can be a story that is close to a director’s heart, like John Ford’s The Quiet Man, or present a political point of view, like Costa-Gavras’ Z, or explore the dark side of life, like John Cassavetes’ Faces. Woody Allen uses Annie Hall to show us the wild, funny, imaginative mind of Woody Allen. The success of the film should have been the first round bell for all filmmakers to make a film about themselves. But this didn’t happen – because it’s not as easy as it looks.

Annie Hall is about a man remembering the woman that got away. It is told in flashbacks, skipping randomly around in time, with remembrances which occasionally turn into pure fantasy, like pulling Marshall McLuhan from behind a movie display to berate an intellectual phony. If Ingmar Bergman was raised in Brooklyn with dysfunctional Jewish parents – this might have been the way Wild Strawberries turned out.

Once upon a time young adults in their late teens and twenties rushed out each weekend to dilapidated theatres called to as “art houses” and watched the latest foreign film – with faded subtitles that were nearly impossible to read.  This was during the 1950’s and 60’s and directors like Bergman, Truffaut, and Fellini, were superstars of the Auteur Theory, a movement that celebrated personal filmmaking. It’s the era of Italian neo-realism with Vittorio De Sica and the French New Wave with Jean-Luc Godard. But it was an international movement. There is Tony Richardson in England, Satyajit Ray in India, Akira Kurosawa in Japan, and Luis Bunuel in Spain and Mexico.

This passionate love affair with foreign filmmakers will never happen again on a scale like this. It was a time when the Old Hollywood studio rules were tossed out and handheld camera work, improvisation, jump cuts, flash forwards, jazz scores, and little stories about common people replaced seamless filmmaking and happy endings. This movement changed film, and while glitz and thunder have returned to big budget movies, the cinematic techniques pioneered in this era have become part of the visual language of every motion picture.

This movement sprang up in countries after World War II, with directors and writers reflecting on their people and heritage. These films were a window to different cultures and a reflective look at the human soul in the modern age. Many of the great silent directors, such as F. W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, and Billy Wilder, were forced to journey from their homelands to America and eventually changed Hollywood from within. However, after The War filmmakers stayed in their countries and made the films they wanted to make. These films ended up in art houses and influenced the Baby Boomer Generation – or the Movie Generation, as Pauline Kael titled it.

Personal filmmaking is the foundation of the American independent movement with Cassavetes, the movies of Stanley Kubrick, and the New Hollywood with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. On the most basic level, personal filmmaking is a battle cry against melodramatic, linear movie storytelling. Films didn’t have to be based on classic novels or popular plays. A movie could be about a man whose bicycle is stolen and wanders the city looking for it with his son. Or a grumpy old professor taking a car trip and recalling his past.

Films could be like the novels of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, telling personal stories about the artist himself. But movies allow for a greater inter-perspective of the creative mind by manipulating time, showing dreams, and mixing fantasy with reality. The mind remembers in flashes of visual images, and these bits and pieces of memory can be triggered by music or revisiting a location. The mind daydreams when bored, and makes up strange short features while the rest of the body sleeps.

Since the mind can think about sex, a bad boss, nuclear war in the Middle East, where to go for lunch, what franchise will replace Harry Potter and sex in just a few seconds – it tends to respond to structure. This need for structure is perhaps why there are schools, marriage, and linear stories. From Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon onward, movie stories open at the beginning and continue to a logical dramatic climax. Sometimes a scene from the end will start a story, but then flashback, revealing the circumstances in a linear fashion.

James Joyce and William Faulkner experimented with stream of consciousness in literature, mixing up time and place, but in Hollywood movies that try this kind of experimentation are considered – well, bad box office, because it confuses the ticket buyers. After all, if the mind wanted to see the haphazard way the mind works, then Last Year a Marienbad or The Tree of Life would be more popular than The Wizard of Oz.

The cool thing about this golden age of foreign films is that audiences were looking for something different. It wasn’t a huge audience, but big enough to turn a profit for some of the low-budgeted movies from France, Japan, Sweden and Italy. The young, rebellious moviegoers that saw these films took to the streets, as Goddard advised, and become the next generation of directors and writers. The films that most impressed this Dr. Spock generation were the ones directed and written by a single, god-like individual. 

So, when a precocious young boy in Brooklyn, named Allan Stewart Konigsberg, saw Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and Fellini’s 8 ½, it must have been the modern equivalent of seeing the talking burning bush at Saturday matinee. Rashomon tells one story from multiple, conflicting points of view. Wild Strawberries uses dreams and locations to trigger old memoires. And 8 ½ is about a movie director having a nervous breaking down, mixing reality with circus-like fantasies.

I have shown these films to classes for many years, and the reactions are consistently the same: A few students claim the movies inspired an interest in foreign cinema. The next group openly admits they had no idea what the hell was going on. And the last (and biggest) group flatly states they were bored and swears they’ll never watch another black-and-white film with subtitles again.

As important as these films are to me, I reluctantly understand the latter two reactions. Like so many of the foreign classics from this era, you needed to have seen them when they came out. They were like lightning flashes; fresh, original, challenging, and wildly exciting on an intellectual level, which is a phrase not tossed around much nowadays.  Like Alvy taking Annie to The Sorrow and the Pity, this was an era of upheaval in the Arts where people wanted to be mentally challenged and the word “slow” wasn’t a death toll for a movie.

I mention personal filmmaking and the influences of foreign films to show where some of Woody’s inspiration came from, which in rare interviews he talks about, plus to illustrate how remarkable Annie Hall is. It uses tricks from Bergman and Fellini (and, yes, they are tricks), but it’s not “boring,” it’s not “confusing,” and without it there might not be a Ground Hog Day, When Harry Met Sally, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or (500) Days of Summer. Of course Annie Hall doesn’t have subtitles (well, once), and it’s in color, though Woody refers to cinematographer Gordon Wills as “The Prince of Darkness.”

The secret is obvious – humor. People can watch the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, which is pure insanity with a thin, almost non-existent storyline, and no one has a problem comprehending a second of it.  It’s zany, it’s crazy, it’s funny, and people accept the nonsense without question. But show the same people Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly and they are usually lost and confused, though the movie makes a helluva lot of more sense than Duck Soup.

Humor doesn’t have to be madcap. Look down the WGA list and every film, with the possible exception of The Sweet Smell of Success, has moments of carefully planned humor. Some of the films are outright comedies, but even Schindler’s List has scenes with real touches of human comedy.

Annie Hall opens with the main character breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience:

Alvy Singer: There’s an old joke – two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ‘em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.” Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life – full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly. The other important joke, for me, is one that’s usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freud’s “Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious,” and it goes like this – I’m paraphrasing, “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” That’s the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.

And, yes, Freud did write about humor – but it’s very dry.

By having Alvy address the camera, Woody and his writing partner Marshall Brickman, are doing something no screenwriter should try, because there is no guarantee that the Money People will let the writer also direct and star in the film. Woody paid his dues with a series of successful low-budget comedies, where he tried out a few of the story tricks in Annie Hall – a film referred to as the dividing line between the old Woody and the new Woody.

To talk directly at the camera is a difficult thing. It tends to make the audience uncomfortable. Hitchcock has murderers stare at the camera in his thrillers for this very reason. Only a few actors can get away with it, because personal charm is required. Michael Caine did it in Alfie and Matthew Broderick did it in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but there’re only a few. Woody is one of them.

No other screenplay on the WGA list has the main character addressing the camera. Several films use a voiceover to guide the audience through the story, but neither Addison DeWitt or Joe Gills break the fourth wall.

Opening Annie Hall this way creates an immediate feeling that anything goes. It’s like meeting a stranger who makes you laugh, and then suddenly he’s telling you the story of his heartbreak. In Casablanca, Rick got drunk and didn’t want to talk about it. In Annie Hall, Alvy can’t stop talking about it. And since he is talking to the camera, he is telling YOU about his woes.

Alvy Singer: Annie and I broke up, and I still can get my mind around that. You know, I keep sifting the pieces of the relationship through my mind and examining my life and trying to think of where did the screw up come. You know? A year ago we were in love.

By breaking the fourth wall, and using this as the setup for the voiceover, Alvy can jump around in time and re-imagine scenes from his life. There is the feeling that the story is being told in real time, and occasionally Alvy remembers something he left out.  For the most part Annie Hall follows a linear path, from meeting Annie (“La-di-da, la-di-da, la la.”) to her growing independent, and a final lunch together, with “Seems Likes Old Times” underscoring. It’s Pygmalion set in Brooklyn during the radical 70’s.

Another reason Annie Hall is not imitated is because Woody and Brickman have so many “gags” that other writers can’t use without comparison: Randomly interviewing people on the street about their sex lives, talking to the camera in Allison Portchnik’s bedroom about why he’s turning her off, Annie and Alvy watching Annie with an earlier boyfriend, having Annie’s spirit leave her body during sex, turning the characters into Disney cartoons, and a split screen with Annie and Alvy in therapy,

Alvy Singer’s Therapist: How often do you sleep together?

Annie Hall’s Therapist: Do you have sex often?

Alvy Singer: Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.

Annie Hall: Constantly. I’d say three times a week.

Charles Chaplin, the original writer, director and actor, understood his screen image and how to play it counterpoint to the subject matter. He wrote his scripts knowing he was going to direct and star in the movie. This is why the Little Tramp in City Lights can fall in love with a blind flower girl and mix slapstick comedy with deep human feelings. Woody is a similar kind of Everyman with his insecurities and heartfelt emotions about the opposite sex.

Besides, just because something is funny doesn’t mean it can’t be a profound observation about the human condition. No matter how philosophical Bergman or Truffaut or Terrence Malick get, no one has described a broken love affair better this:

Alvy Singer: A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.