“I don’t mean to put writers down because without them, there’s no tale, but the words are pretty much secondary. I mean, they’re important to start the thing off, but when you look at film, it’s all about behavior. It’s real life, it’s something real, you’re not just talking words.”
Goodfella with a camera from Little Italy.
Part 1 of the Martin Scorsese story.
Film at Lincoln Center presents Human Conditions: The Films of Mike Leigh, a retrospective of the widely lauded director’s career, running from May 27-June 8.
If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!).
… As someone who has made both hits and flops, I’ve always thought it fundamentally unsustainable for a company to treat all participants as if they had made a hit before the project is even produced. – Jason Blum
But what I would like to question — and, honestly, attack — is the idea of “old” movies.
Peter Bogdanovich, the late director hated that term. “There are no old movies,” he liked to say.
“There are only movies you haven’t seen before.”
Even while he embodies unnatural evil, though, there is also something pitiable about the decrepit Orlok.
“He is utterly scary and devastatingly sad at the same time,”
Unspooling at BAM: Kicking off with the 30th Anniversary special screening of Juice,
followed by Bringing Out The Dead, Jungle Fever, Bad Lieutenant, Belly and more.
Mar 11—Mar 17, 2022
“My original reason for going into films was that I had gotten tired of seeing
Blacks portrayed in an image that I didn’t agree with. And so I said, gee, I can do better than that.
And if you don’t control your images, then you don’t have a base for controlling your destiny.
So I wanted to control how I was perceived. And therefore, I went into films.”
“All I wanted to do was to act with John, for the rest of my life. He was my acting partner.”
– Al Pacino
