Author: UncaScroogeMcD

 

As I’ve noted elsewhere, we seem to be experiencing a rush of great DVD releases. This flowering, this elevation, of DVD content may be a coincidence, or it may be the last gasp of DVD before Blu-Ray or HD-DVD take over. Or it may just be “fall,” when, traditionally, the movie industry “gets serious.” But whatever the reason, DVD collectors are grateful for such recent notable titles as the box sets of Rohmer and Malle, Powell’s  A Canterbury Tale, the  Mr. Moto set, and the box of Jayne Mansfield movies. Also among them was  Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier, the latest version of a film that continues to reveal new facets and spark interesting commentary. It can be endlessly watched and endlessly debated.

 

Another similarly rich movie is  Seven Samurai, coming out from Criterion in a new three disc set Tuesday, September 5 (and retailing for $49.95). Thanks to the new commentary track and the two big supplements, I learned this time around that the movie  should be called  Seven Ronin. It seems, if I understand the chat correctly, that the seven warriors coming to the aid of a small village annually raided by brigands, are masterless samurai, i.e., ronin. In fact, according to one of the experts on the disc, the real samurai, which made up five per cent of the population in the 16th century when  Seven Samurai is set, were often merely bureaucrats filing paperwork for their bosses.

 

 

But that is just one nugget amongst many. And the film is well worth seeing again anyway because  Seven Samurai is one of the great works of cinematic “existential humanism,” perhaps the best “philosophy” for making great, high art films, and most post war European films fall broadly into this category (you might also call it the Janus Films philosophy). Kurosawa’s innovation is to marry it to an action film, and his ability to elicit beautiful movement from his camera, from his cast, and, more theoretically, from his narrative, serve to, so to speak, embed his views, rather than make them the point of a given scene.

 

 

I’ve just re-listened to the Michael Jeck audio commentary track, often heralded as the gold standard of audio commentary tracks, and which also appears on the original DVD, which bore spine number 2, and which also shares with the new set the movie’s theatrical trailer. Also included then but now missing were an essay by David Ehrenstein and, for those lucky enough to get the earliest pressings of the disc, a restoration demonstration that was later removed.

I’ve also listened to the new commentary track recorded for the new release, still labeled CC No. 2 so it supersedes the old disc. The new commentary is an edited group effort that begins with Stephen Prince, and proceeds through David Desser, Tony Rayns, Donald Richie (who emphasizes the influence of Soviet cinema on AK), and Joan Mellen. The set also comes with a 60-page booklet that includes essays by Kenneth Turan, Peter Cowie, Philip Kemp, Peggy Chiao, Alain Silver, Stuart Galbraith IV, Toshiro Mifune, Sidney Lumet, and Arthur Penn.

 

 

This is a three disc set and the first disc, which has the first half of the movie, also features a suite of trailers and teasers, and a production stills and poster gallery, combining to present about 40 images. The second disc, besides offering the second half of the film, features the 55-minute episode on  Seven Samurai from the Japanese television series  It’s Wonderful to Create (segments of this series also appear on other Criterions). From it, we learn that there was a first scene that was stuck from the film in which the brigands attack an earlier, different village, and then the doc runs through the script writing process, the film’s music, problems in shooting the “burning water mill” sequence, and other cruxes. It’s highly entertaining and informative, with many alum of the production telling funny anecdotes. It’s also filled with shots of the much-worked over script and costume test footage.

 

Finally, disc three has two big supplements.  My Life in Cinema is a two-hour TV interview with Kurosawa from 1993, probably arranged to help promote his then recent and it turns out last film  Madadayo. It’s conducted by fellow helmer Nagisa Oshima, a wholly different kind of director, but who acts with deference towards his elder. It’s a good nuts and bolts interview, talking about AK’s background and how he does what he does. Oshima begins by asking about Kurosawa’s ethnic background (the director was unusually tall), and Kurosawa avers that there may have been some Russian interbreeding way back in his family’s past (which makes an interesting connection with Richie’s points).

The second is  Seven Samurai: Origins and Influences. This is an original documentary, made by Criterion. It’s divided into three parts. The first covers the history of the samurai in Japanese culture. The second part covers earlier samurai films, with clips from early silent films featuring rather stagy, balletic sword fights. The final part covers the innovations to the genre that Kurosawa wrought. This effort provides a good grounding in all that goes into the samurai legend, thanks to the various commentaries, who make up the same scholars doing the commentary, with one exception, and should inspire newer fans to get caught up via such books as Alain Silver’s  The Samurai Film, along with books by the scholars summoned to commentate.

Criterion has a new, softer look and a new logo, introduced a few movies back, but this is the release that is probably going to introduce it to the consumer. This set will be a bestseller.

 

 

 

I’m growing rather weary of being quoted on noir DVD audio commentary tracks. I don’t mean to be blasé about it, but it happens ever so often. 

The first time was on James Foley’s track for Confidence, where he made reference to my earlier review of his film After Dark, My Sweet, which I dubbed a film soleil. Now, a commentator on one of the four noirs here under review (I think it is Eddie Muller on Double Indemnity) says something like “Someone once said that there are no bad noirs” “¦ and that was me again (in my book Film Soleil, from Pocket Essentials). Now, it is true that none of these people remember my name, and in fact the idea that there are no bad noirs is probably a pretty common one and someone else may have said it well before me. But still, all this attention is making my head hurt and I have to lie down.

But it is true. There are no bad noirs. Even the “bad” ones, such as a couple in the latest batch of Fox noirs, are still interesting, evocative, and can inspire comment.

Fox releases a trio of films in its series Fox Film Noir every three months or so, and the latest set brings the count up to 21. Universal has done a batch or two, but has slowed down considerably, and its new double disc set of Double Indemnity, published as part of its Legacy Series, seems more like a Billy Wilder production than an iteration of its noir catalog.

 

 

Shock, from 1946, is No. 20 in the set and is a Gaslight – Snake Pit sort of deal in which Anabel Shaw, in San Francisco to meet her husband after a long separation due to the war, witnesses a murder and falls into a state of catatonia. She is rushed to an asylum by, of all people, the very murderer she observed, played by Price, who happens to be a psychiatrist having an affair with Lynn Bari, the film’s femme fatale.

 

 

Like many a noir, especially the noirs influenced by Hitchcock, this one, directed by Alfred L. Werker from a script credited to Martin Berkeley, Albert DeMond, and Eugene Ling, shows a surprising amount of sympathy for its “villain.” Price’s Dr. Richard Cross is a man who momentarily loses control, and then tries to mop up after himself, harried by his Lady Macbeth, Bari. He is divided, doesn’t want to do many of the things he ends up doing, and Price, in one of his first villainous roles, manages to evoke great sympathy for Cross, despite a tendency to haminess, which afflicted Price throughout his career. Meanwhile, the heroine is asleep or unconscious most of the time, to be carted around from one venue to another (like Jodi Foster in most of the dreadful Five Corners), and her husband, when he arrives, spends most of his time trying to catch up with what the audience knows.

The Fox noirs have settled into a routine in which basically for supplements you get a yak track and the trailer. On Shock the track is by John Stanley, the Creature Features movie guide author, summoned because he is something of an authority on Price. Stanley is one of those unvarnished (he says “Eye-Talian”), somewhat mush-mouthed (he says “landschape” instead of “landscape”), and jokey film geeks who read too much of Famous Monsters of Filmland when he was a kid: his commentary is filled with excruciatingly bad puns (“What food these morsels be”) no doubt in mimicry of that magazine’s editor Forrest J Ackerman. The commentary is mostly about Price, whom Stanley had the advantage of meeting twice, but he is also good on almost all the actors on the screen, even those whose names don’t appear in the credits.

 

 

As others have noted, Fox seems to be stretching the definition of noir with its inclusion of Fourteen Hours (No. 21), the 1951 drama about a potential suicide that Howard Hawks famously hated. Directed by Henry Hathaway, it’s more like a social problem film, like No Way Out, the Sidney Poitier – Richard Widmark race-themed drama which was in an earlier batch of Fox noirs.

 

 

It comes across as a well meaning TV drama of the time, and could have been penned by Rod Serling. But it is also afraid to come out, so to speak, and say what it is really about. Richard Basehart’s potential suicide never says why he is depressed, but it is clear from the subtext, as Foster Hirsch points out in his detailed and interpretive commentary, that Basehart’s character is probably gay and wrestling with his identity. Besides the trailer, the disc also features the film’s press book.

 

 

Vickie is No. 19, came out in 1953, and is a remake of I Wake Up Screaming, which came out 10 years earlier and is considered to be the first Fox noir, if not one of the first films in the genre itself. Both films are based on Steve Fisher’s novel about a publicist accused of killing the client who was getting too big for her britches. Neither film captures the flavor of the novel, which has wonderfully cynical things to say about show business, but the earlier film (which is Fox Film Noir No. 18) is better cast. There it is Victor Mature as the publicist versus Laird Cregar as the cop who, Laura-like, secretly loved the victim (Carole Landis). Betty Grable, trying to escape musicals, plays the victim’s sister, who ends up aiding the publicist.

 

 

H. Bruce Humberstone directed Screaming, and imported noirish tones from his B movie work. Vicki is helmed by Harry Horner who had, if it is possible, an even less distinguished directorial career than Humberstone ( Red Planet Mars). After some 15 films, he gave it up to become a production designer, working on such films as The Hustler and The Driver.

 

 

Vicki is also weakly cast. Elliott Reid is awfully light as the publicist, and Richard Boone is game but sluggish and miscast as the cop. Foster Hirsch in his commentary, favors Jeanne Crain as sister Jill over Jean Peters as victim Vicki (they look remarkably alike), but I had the opposite impression. Jean Peter struck me as a real find, an actress whose career might bear reconsideration. Hirsch’s commentary is efficient and informative, and the disc also comes with the trailer and three galleries of art and advertising.

 

 

Double Indemnity is a long awaited DVD but it has in fact been on disc twice already, first by Universal in a bare bones release, then by Image in a transfer from a scratchy print. Still, that Image disc was hard to find when it went out of print, and in the video store down the street from me you had to put down a $200 dollar deposit in order to rent it, as if it were Salo. Curiously, though, I found a pristine used copy of the Image disc just a couple of weeks ago for seven dollars.

And what a pleasure it is to re-submerge oneself into this great film, with its crisp dialogue, brilliant acting from unlikely cast members, now in a nice package with an excellent (if soft) transfer and good supplements that honor the film.

 

 

This two-disc set has an excellent full-frame transfer (1.33:1) transfer from a new source-print with an adequate DD 2.0 audio, plus English, French, and Spanish subtitles. The supplements on Disc One include an introduction by Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies, and two commentary tracks. The first is an enthusiastic, informative track by Richard Schickel, who wrote a BFI Classic monograph on the film, and here goes over the basics. The second has Nick Redman interviewing screenwriter Lem Dobbs on the film.

 

 

Dobbs is the son of American born but British educated painter R. B. Kitaj, who in the late 1960s and early 1970s spent a lot of time in Los Angeles socializing with and painting famous directors, such as John Ford. Kitaj also happened to know Wilder who was a great art collector. Dobbs has several anecdotes to tell about meeting Wilder (once with Hockney and his dad), and nervously giving Wilder scripts to read that were later critiqued at Wilder’s independent office at the Writers and Artists building. Dobbs notes the sense of place given to Los Angeles, specific streets named and places shot, that he speculates would not fly with contemporary executives because they wouldn’t see the point of being so specific about a place that most viewers wouldn’t have been to. The most interesting thing that Dobbs says is to go against conventional thinking and charge I.A.L. Diamond with a degradation in Wilder’s output in the 1960s; he maintains that after his collaboration with Diamond began Wilder’s films more theatrical and more like sit coms.

 

 

The retrospective documentary, Shadows of Suspense (37 minutes) also on the first disc is a very good celebration of the film and it is also interesting to see the faces that go with a lot of the noir yak tracks one hears: the ubiquitous and bickersome Silver and Ursini look like twins. Finally there is the theatrical trailer.

Disc Two consists solely of the 1973 made-for-TV remake starring Richard Crenna in the MacMurray role, Lee J. Cobb as his boss, and Samantha Eggar as the femme fatale. It is exactly as good as it sounds.

As others have pointed out, not included on the set is the famous real ending, the gas-chamber sequence, which apparently did not test well at the time and may be lost, though stills exist. Paramount’s version of Sunset Boulevard had a version of the famous dropped opening, but there is not even an attempt to recreate it via stills and script here. But perhaps that is for the super deluxe HD-DVD 70th anniversary edition in 2014.

 

Lohan, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lind-say-low-han: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of (three or) four steps (depending on how you pronounce her last name) down the palate to tap, at four, on the soft palate. Lin. Say. Lo. Han (or Loan). She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing five foot five in one boot. She was Lindsay in slacks. She was Linds at school. She was Lindsay on the dotted line. But in my dreams she was always Lohan.

If only she would stop making movies like  Just My Luck.

Not that there is anything wrong with it. It is not funny, but is supposed to be a comedy. It evokes no sentiment or tears, and it supposed to be a romance. It is set in Manhattan but does not capture the spirit of the city (but then, few of the recent comedies set there have, perhaps because they are usually shot in Toronto).

Lohan has herself been very lucky. She has had, in essence, nine lives. But is her luck running out?

There is a marvelous moment, a typically Lohanian moment in the middle of what at this point remains Lindsay Lohan’s magnum opus,  Mean Girls. Her character, Cady Heron, is a newcomer to school serving as something of an undercover agent or sleeper cell on behalf of her newfound nerd friends and against the school’s elite “Heathers” who have oppressed them.

Thanks to plot complications, Cady has joined the mean girls of the title in a Christmas talent show. Dressed in Santa hats, higher elf drag, and go-go boots, the four girls come out to dance to “Jingle Bell Rock.” It is a given within the history of the school that the mean girls always “win” the contest.

 

 

Lohan as Cady dances the other girls off the fucking screen. It’s a moment of revelation, like Astaire, or Kelly, or Travolta in their first films, and one regret for her fans among Lohan’s tumultuous life and career direction is that dancing has been minimized (her mother was briefly a Rockette). Her co-stars are no mean achievers themselves. Chief meanie Rachel McAdams went on to pop fame in  A Walk to Remember and  Red Eye; Lacey Chabert will be seen shortly in the  Black Christmas remake; and the exotic looking Amanda Seyfried has appeared in  Veronica Mars and the HBO show  Big Love. And this is not to put them down, but none of them evince the absolute joy in movement, the confidence and sassiness that define both a great dancer and a mega star.

How many lives does Lohan have left? Has Lohan indeed not become a mean girl on her own (abusing Disneyland staff, for example) in what readers of magazines take to be her private life? If so, too bad, because Lohan has the potential to be the next great screen star, a new Julia Roberts, able to straddle romantic comedies and Oscar winning dramas.

Lohan built a lot of good will with that scene and that movie. But she wasn’t able to capitalize on it. What she needed to do was to solidify public love with another romantic comedy, just as Julia Roberts consolidated public affection generated by  Mystic Pizza and  Steel Magnolias by leaping into  Pretty Woman. She needed to appear across from a man of equal or higher stature so that she can share it and feed off it.Instead, she opted for serious indie-hood by appearing in a Robert Altman film, which is a crap shoot, since his films are so uneven and few people go see them. Normally I wouldn’t care to dwell on the career aspect of an actress (these thoughts, by the way, are a tacit admision of one’s real inferiorty in the face of the mean girl in Lohan), but I like her so much I want to see more of her movies (just as I want her mirror image, Storm Large, to keep going on  Rock Star even though I don’t want her to win). But of her forthcoming films –   Speechless, an updating of  Cyrano based on an  L. Sprague De Camp story;  Chapter 27, the second of two forthcoming movies about Mark David Chapman;  A Woman of No Importance, the Oscar Wilde play directed by the unpromising  Janusz Kaminski (and which will require a British acceent?),  Bobby, another assassination story, this one about the night Kennedy was shot  – only one,  Georgia Rule, sounds like they might fit this bill  sounds like it might fit the bill, partially because the cast is strong (Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman, Dermot Mulroney, Cary Elwes) and is directed by  Pretty Woman‘s Gary Marshall (who has, unfortunately, been dreadful lately. In fact, he was dreadful in Pretty Woman but the movie transcended its ineptitude). In almost all of these productions, Lohan has garnered headlines about her behavior, on and off the set.

Lohan is a new breed of star whom most adults probably don’t understand. Like Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, and Hilary Duff, they are singer-actors, who feud with each other across the pages of competing tabloids. They have high school-ized the media and live their lives in contra-distinction to the “moral lessons” their movies tell, like the mean girls they play against. Even a  New York Times article in May of 2006 fretted out loud about Lohan burning herself out. But Lohan is clearly resilient. She has already had nine lives, and unlike the cat of the fable, may have nine more before she’s through.

 

1) Started out as a young Natalie Wood, in the Shirley Temple – Lolita mode, a preternaturally talented and charismatic child actress.

2)  As a “Disney star” with all that means about living up to a certain style or standard of kid behavior and fealty to parents. (Are actors auteurs? Can a kid star be said to choose films that reflect her personality? Can thematic  similarities be found among the young star’s films?)

3)  As a “Tweener” star, hinting at sex and boys without explicit references.

4) In an alternate career as Lindsay the singer, with two albums out.

5) In the real world, as a “Law and Order” victim of her dad’s hi-jinks.

6)  As she matured, as the jilted lover pulling an Ava Gardner going to war with the tabloid and paparazzi and indulging in self-destructive behavior.

7)  Thanks to the Altman film and a few others coming up, as a future indie queen.

8)  As an actor – auteur. But are actors auteurs? Can a kid be said to choose films that reflect her personality?

9) But ultimately, there is Lindsay,  the sexy dancer, the new Ann-Margret, waiting first for her  Bye Bye Birdie, and then for her  Carnal Knowledge.

 

Just My Luck is directed by Donald Petrie, who was probably a good choice. He has had a few 100 million dollar hits, and he was the sherpa for one of Roberts’s best early performances in  Mystic Pizza. He has a knack for working with sex symbols (as in   The Favor), but is helpless before a bad or indifferent script, such as the one with which  Just My Luck is burdened, credited to a smorgasbord of writers, among them I. Marlene King (Senior Trip), Amy Harris (Sex and the City), Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer, and Mark Blackwell ( Max Keeble’s Big Move). 

 

 

You can tell that many hands (but no Lohan) were involved in the composition because they can’t even keep straight the definition of look, as other reviewers have noted, as it tells of a curiously lucky girl (she was named homecoming queen of a high school she didn’t even go to) in one of those vague Manhattan comedy jobs whose luck is transfered to a loser (Chris Pine)  . The supplementary material doesn’t help much. There are three deleted scenes, only one of which is substantial and could have stood to remain in the movie, plus there is the short featurette “Look of Luck,” and a behind-the-scenes look at the band, McFly, that figures in the plot.

The disc has a fine widescreen transfer with a full frame transfer on the B side.  Just My Luck hit the street on Tuesday, August 22nd, and retails for $29.95.

 

Director Lance Weiler can’t stay out of the woods.

You remember Lance Weiler don’t you? In 1998 he co-wrote and co-directed The Last Broadcast. That was the historic indie film that was simultaneously screened in numerous theaters around the country via then-groundbreaking satellite technology. It seemed to be the techno wave of movie exhibition’s future, and though occasionally someone in the movie business predicts that satellite broadcasts will soon supersede celluloid, it hasn’t yet come to pass, partially because DVDs and digital home download have edged it out.

The Last Broadcast was also famous for turning out to be a potential inspiration for The Blair Witch Project, sort of the way that City on Fire popped up surprisingly as a precursor to Reservoir Dogs. They tell similar tales. In The Last Broadcast, some filmmakers and a “psychic” take to the Pine Barrens in search of the Jersey Devil. The film features some beautiful footage of the woods by day and night The Last Broadcast proved to be a true indie film (made for $900 dollars), that proved to be a well-made and cleverly twisted tale of hubris and insanity.

His latest film, the excellent Head Trauma, also shows traces of the lure of the forest (as does his next film, but more about that in a minute), and Weiler, helming and writing alone this time (his cinematic partner, Stefan Avalos, has his own shot-on-and-sent-direct-to video film, The Ghosts of Edendale, from 2003. Those familiar with Last Broadcast will see similar themes: mysterious figures in the forest, interpersonal incompetence, hubris, and a narrative twist that takes the center of the film and points it back at itself (if that makes any sense).

Head Trauma tells the story of one George Walker (Vince Mola, a sort of Francis Ford Coppola clone). After living on the road or in the streets for some 20 years, he returns to the home of his late grandmother, now a condemned structure in a lower middle class neighborhood. With the help of Julian (Jamil A.C. Mangan) the African American youth next door, who is also a gifted cartoonist, George attempts to clean up the house and rescind the condemnation, in the face of obstacles from an old high school rival who stands to profit from its destruction. Also impeding George’s labors are the bad dreams he has, in which mysterious images rattle around in his head, among them a small feminine figure whose features are obscured by a large hood (like the running girl in Don’t Look Now), and some disturbing activity in a wooded field, a hanging and a large sleeping bag being hauled away.

 

Head Trauma </i> is a psychological thriller of precision and insight. George is a not particularly sympathetic character, it soon turns out, and he tends to destroy potential relationships before they even happen, especially with an old flame from the neighborhood, Mary (Mary Monahan). He doesn’t need his old rival to sabotage his house, as George is fully capable of sabotaging himself.

Although at first it seems like Head Trauma is going to be an “old dark house” horror film, it is in reality loosely part of the tradition of thrillers that include An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Jacob’s Ladder, and Angel Heart, speaking broadly, but with some of the suspense created by the unseen and by psychological tensions found in the films of Polanski and Roeg. Weiler has a knack for making empty rooms in daylight and the woods in the afternoon feel ominous.

Weiler’s script is a lean, mean machine, with no fat on it and with little or anything that can qualify as a subplot. The film is creepy, with additional help from the excellent music and sound production, and – in a phase that I hope will soon disappear from the reviewer’s syntax – for a film shot on HD video looks fantastic, very controlled and precise. There are even superb arial shots.

Head Trauma was released theatrically in several markets in mid-August, before its September 26 release on DVD on the Heretic label. Despite Weiler’s hectic schedule I managed to extract a brief interview with him about his cinematic past, present, and future. Weiler proved to be an ageless lad who could easily have a career in front of the camera as behind it, and is an articulate, passionate lover of movies of all kinds.

It seems to me that the movie industry is a little short sighted in not taking up the technological breakthroughs established in your first film. Having made the history-making The Last Broadcast, did you still find it hard to capitalize on its success to advance to the “next step” of your career, so to speak?

In some respects yes and others no. In a lot of ways we were ahead of the curve in terms of the way we made and distributed TLB. So we found ourselves at a strange place. On one hand people respected what we’d done on the other they had no clue. Sometimes people get hung up on aspects of the work. For instance they’d say TLB – that’s a nice documentary but can you do narrative? They miss the point. Sometimes the tech aspects got in the way of the story but I think it’s always some type of a struggle to get the work made and to get it seen.

What was the genesis of Head Trauma?
HEAD TRAUMA comes out of two life experiences that took me very dark places The first was a head on collision with a garbage truck that almost killed me. Twelve years ago I was laying in a hospital bed with a severe head injury and my jaw wired shut. I could have died that day, stupidly I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt – my jaw snapped the steering wheel and my head busted the windshield and thankfully I lost consciousness. After the accident I was plagued by vivid nightmares of the crash until one day they just stopped.

Flash forward to 2000 and I’m pitching a TV show to some major networks. After a year of pitching we land at a network and after a roller coaster ride that takes another two years of the show being on again / off again we received money to shoot a pilot. Working on the show ranks as one of the worst professional experiences I’ve had. At times it really felt like I was a tenant farmer not a co-creator executive of a major network show. In the end we shot a great pilot but it died a slow painful death and I felt like I went through the five stages of grief.So in the winter of 2003 when I was feeling like shit and unsure of what to do a couple simple words change my path. I owe a huge thanks to my wife Jennifer for simply saying “Do what you love just make another movie.” It’s so simple and obvious but at the time I was out of my head. And that’s the series of events that created HEAD TRAUMA.

 

Why make a “horror” film? Why that genre,rather than another, or just a straightforward drama? What does horror offer you or inspire in you that, at least in this case, creatively you can’t get elsewhere?
I love the horror genre. There is something interesting to me about exercising those demons, those dark things that rest in one’s mind – it’s a way to get them out of your own head and do something productive with them. I’ve had some dark times in my life. When I was younger I drown and at the age of 14 my house burnt down, and then a number of years ago I was in a horrible car accident. I always like to have some autobiographical element within my films. Water and fire play an important role within HEAD TRAUMA as does the concept of a blow to the head.

Given that it is a lot easier to make movies these days, what remains the most difficult aspect of filmmaking?
By far the most difficult aspect of filmmaking these days isn’t a production issue it’s a promotion / distribution issue. With over 20,000 feature films being made due to the boom in digital production the chances of a film being seen past a film festival are rare. On top of that releasing a truly independent film into today’s market with out millions for P&A can be very difficult. But thanks to the web there are ways to build an audience and get the word out in very effective ways. For instance the web comic for HEAD TRAUMA is not a normal film site http://headtraumamovie.com – it is an interactive comic with some twisted stuff hidden under the surface. It becomes an extension of the story. Now more than ever it is important to create extra value for the fans. With HEAD TRAUMA I’m working hard to give a good presentation from start to finish. I’ve been on the other end and I know what type of things hook me in – that is really the issue knowing your audience and then the trick is finding a way to get the work to them.

Can you give us a hint about what you might be working on next?
Yeah it’s a really dark and twisted flick set in the remote wilderness. It’s based on an actual experience of my life that occurred while I hiked a part of the Application Trail called the “Wilderness.” The AT is a wild place and being alone for 10 to 12 days with no civilization in sight can be a very creepy.

Here’s a preview of the supplements on the Head Trauma disc. Not only is there a detailed audio commentary track with Weiler, but there are several relatively short but informative makings ofs, one about how the crew blew up a car, another on the man who help shot the ariel shots, an interview with comic book artist S. R. Bissette and his son on the comics they created for the film, some cast interviews, and a piece on the film’s music. Bissette will be very familiar to readers of QuickStopEntertainment as one of the artists on Swamp Thing and numerous other comics, including some independent work in recent years.

As with the extras on The Last Broadcast, the supplements are uninhibited, and Weiler and his collaborators are articulate raconteurs. Finally, there are trailers for both Head Trauma and The Last Broadcast.

 

A few years ago I went to a local theatrical production in a small venue that catered to small troupes doing original material. The play (I forget the title) was a satire on radio mystery dramas in the spirit of the Firesign Theater’s Nick Danger. 

About halfway through the play it suddenly occurred to me: what the fuck are these people doing drawing on old time radio for their dramatic inspiration? This is 2003? How many people in this room have even  heard an old radio show? In fact, has this young cast itself even heard many radio shows?

 

Still, I think I know the impetus behind the show, which was probably the same impetus behind the movie George Lucas produced,  Radioland Murders, from 1994. The hectic world of on the air broadcasting creates a dynamic, vivid environment that pays homage to an earlier, fun time and which allows actors to ham it up. Lucas was probably also inspired by the 1940s films set in the world of radio, such as the Red Skelton “Whistler” series. When you are a kid, those movies seem like perfect films, blending horror and comedy and suspense, like  Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It’s the same original honorific impulse behind  Star Wars.

 

In the end, though,  Radioland Murders, credited to writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz and Jeff Reno and Ron Osborn, from a story by Lucas, and directed by Mel Smith, a comic actor and writer who has directed six movies so far, is no  Star Wars. I’m tempted to say that it is Lucas’s  Hudson Hawk, but he already has one in  Howard the Duck.

 

The whole spirit of  Radioland Murders is based on frenzy and fast talk, except that here the talk isn’t funny. Its premise is a distant relative of that joke in Spielberg’s  1941 when the sailors on the sub complain about the cumbersome size of non-transistor radios. The trick here is that the secret killer behind the spree is an inventor of television. The only time I laughed during any moment in the film’s 112 minutes was when the police detective (Michael Lerner) found he had to pull his officers away from the hypnotizing effect of the tube, which is only showing the famous Native American splash screen.

The film has an all – star cast, filled mostly with people who are still around and still widely viewed as “funny,” from Brian Benben as the harried head writer of the radio network, WBN, making its debut one night in1939, and Jeffrey Tambor as a director who is also the first victim. In between are Mary Stuart Masterson as Benben’s wife (who makes a surprisingly effective ’30s type star in the Jennifer Jason Leigh manner; she and Benben are supposed to be Curt Henderson’s parents from  American Graffiti, set 23 years later), Ned Beatty as the network owner, George Burns as a comic (it’s his last film), Brion James, Michael McKean as a faux Spike Jones, Stephen Tobolowsky, Christopher Lloyd  as the sound effects guy, Larry Miller, Corbin Bernsen as an announcer, Rosemary Clooney, Bobcat Goldthwait as one of the network’s many unpaid writers, Dylan Baker as a cop, Candy Clark and Bo Hopkins reunited again after  American Graffiti, Robert Klein, Harvey Korman, Joey Lawrence, and Peter MacNicol. It’s not that there are too many of them, but that when they are there what they have to do isn’t funny. The blend of death and humor isn’t easy here as it is in the film’s inspirations, especially in scenes such as the one where Larry Miller is crushed bloodily between giant gears. And this is a show that so doesn’t understand radio that one of the talents performing on its opening night is a dance act.

The disc for  Radioland Murders  is as bare bones as a disc gets that doesn’t just start with the movie and have no menu, like a David Lynch disc. You can’t chose your chapter breaks (for the record there are 18 chapters) but it does have the trailer and the “option” of English track and / or subtitles. One peculiarity of the film, or at least this transfer, is that it does not bear a title. There is no title at the beginning, and none in the end credits. Curious.