This is truly a fantastic peek behind the scenes! Thank you very much to Mr Kurant for sharing these stories. Amazing to consider this was the first time Welles used a 150mm lens... the aluminum in the book: genius! Wonderful use of color contrast Kurant - what an amazing chance to have worked with the legend!
Wonderful analysis. I repeatedly watch old movies because I cannot find good current movies. It seems that Hollywood no longer produces quality movies. But I am an old man.
Thanks for posting this. I'm a huge fan of Prometheus and I like seeing all the concept art and hearing about some of the other details that went into creating such an interesting film. I wish Ridley would continue making movies that explore the lore of the Engineers and their motives in creating/destroying life around the universe. Although many people claim to hate this film, I thought it was fantastic. I love the soundtrack too.
Nice! Watched the whole thing! Heat and Public Enemies are two of my all - time favorites, with Heat probably being number 1. What's the last thing Dante shot? Gonna look that up now.
Maybe it's a European sensibility towards humor that gets lost in translation, but if Refn seriously believes that his work even holds a candle to Friedkin's, he is seriously deluded. Knowing this attitude even exists makes my opinion of his film appear in a negative light, and, let's face it, his work can not hold up to scrutiny the same way that Fredkin's work DOES. I think Bill was very nice about the whole thing.
I hate Refn so much. Pretentious hipster doofus. But Friedkin? What a specimen! One of the greatest filmmakers and a hilariously interesting individual.
It's funny - I love the strong, high contrast, often unmotivated coloured lighting, the uncomfortable close-ups and the janky camera effects. So interesting to hear them say how it was the budget and the inexperience / ignorance of youth, and how they would do everything differently now. So much great art comes from the creative overcoming of low budget and young people breaking 'the rules' because they haven't learned them yet.
RIP Haskell Wexler. And, thank you Mark for making this important film. Those who are commenting here that Senior Wexler was harsh to his son haven't watched the whole documentary. That last sequence is what this film is about. Even the toughest and most professional of artists and technicians like Wexler hide an ocean of love within themselves. It's hidden because they get little time to show it. For a person like Haskell, I wonder how he created top class imagery, I would say the best in the Hollywood in films like Matewan and Bound for Glory while being an active participator in the most important movements of our times. I cannot imagine how can someone come up with a film like Medium Cool which is an important document of our times. A film where you are never sure what is fiction and what is real and there lies the beauty of the film. Only an intellectual like Haskell could create such powerful film texts which questions the like film form while questioning the politics of our times. I think most of the directors who found it difficult to work with Haskell were kind of egomaniacs who either could not see or were never able to accept Haskell's intellect as a technician, philosopher, artist and storyteller. All through his life Haskell was looking for respect as a collaborator and not being treated as a slave to someone's whims and fancies. All these pictures would have been much better had these directors listened to Haskell rather than being relentless in their pursuit to treat everyone as their subjects. In this film too, you can see this beautiful chemistry between a son and father as Haskell participates with his camera in filmmaking. That is the beauty of this film. That is the message and purpose of this film and I would like to thank Mark once again.
Friedkin is a legend yes but I tire of these old directors shitting on superheroes. His argument is superhero’s are perfect and save the day. Not so Tony stark is an alcoholic, narcissistic philanderer, Bruce Wayne is eternally a little boy that never got over his trauma of his parents being gunned down in front of him. Frank castle brutally murders low level thugs. And Bruce banner suffers from ptsd of his abusive father which fuels his extreme anger. Friedkin probably never read current comics and still thinks of them as kiddy stuff but they are in their rights good films with flawed people. Kind of hypocritical when people like Friedkin and Scorsese came along the old directors then thought they were excessive. At this point it’s sour grapes
Friedkin is incredible, and a bad ass! Because of his interviews, and after watching Sorcerer (1977) I see The Exorcist a whole lot differently now. Through his eyes is best. The man was incredible.
makes me crazy that they went through all of that for the 3D but it's never been rereleased in theaters like that since then, so basically all of that for a one-off. Same with like avatar.
I couldn’t last 10 minutes into Refn asking the same question over and over again as much as I want to hear Friedkin talk about film it seems much like most of Refn work there’s nothing under the surface of this interview….. lol…..
A brilliant fencing match between these two outstanding directors. Big respect for Refn for being willing to take the heat from Friedkin, because he was willing to challenge him and not back down. Most interviews are too tame to bring out a lot of the truth, or too planned out or end up being performances - this was refreshingly real and interesting.
Some films are so spectacular, you wish you’d never seen it. Because, once you’ve seen it, you know you can never have that unique experience again. Fabulous films are a truly wonderful experience. The Parallax View is one of those films.
Chinatown is self reflexively a noir film and a commentary on the noir genre. This was accomplished by Nicholsons performance that he is seemingly self aware he’s in a detective story but like Houston says “ you may think you know what’s going on but you don’t”. Between Chinatown and True Detective season 2 it pretty much spells out how California is controlled by a handful of extremely wealthy people.
"Thank God nobody was hurt." The chase always looked very real, but I didn't know how real it was. How expensive it must have been to stage all that traffic, and all those crashes, I thought.
