Composition & framing

oddly enough, in previous years to kind of grow up and more expectations to grow up than kids are now. What can I say? I love this introduction of this character so much. And that the jukebox is in the frame really does it for me. It's a Wurlitzer, too.

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As you know, I just love so much how it's shot. I just love the widescreen. I love how actors got a chance in your movie to work against the frame, work with space, and not have to be so confined as we see in so many movies today. How did you work with that?

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composition and work with the actors within the space? Well, it was an interesting choice. I think part of it was economic because it was two perfs instead of four, so we were getting twice as much on every roll of film. So, you know, it was cheaper to shoot. But I think, you know, that long, thin...

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Robert Sommer

So I mean, she comes from the background, of course, with Italian fascism.

10:33 · jump to transcript →

Dr. Gerd Naumann

In the background there are, again, some scenes that we will certainly talk about, which one day do not work so well.

11:14 · jump to transcript →

Dr. Gerd Naumann

She comes back to films in the historical background of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s.

41:11 · jump to transcript →

You know, he's trying to sort of seem enthusiastic about what's going on, and he doesn't know. The great joke is he doesn't know if they speak English. And, you know, again, if you know anything about New York, New Yorkers like to slack if they don't have to. I love the fact the guy's drawing on the cup. And then there's Jerry Stiller in the background as Rico Patrone. And so he is, in essence, Garber's partner.

11:56 · jump to transcript →

he played fast and loose with the geography. The thing that's so great about this is the frame for all of the geography is laid out in the book, and then it is held sacred by the production and Joseph Sargent, the director. By the way, that is Gracie Mansion, which is actually one of the few freestanding places

31:48 · jump to transcript →

The great Kenneth McMillan right in the middle of that maelstrom of people. You know, again, all of these great faces, you know, they're like your pals. And again, with the proper attitude. And I wonder if some of those onlookers in the back are extras or real onlookers. Sadly, there's the World Trade Center in the background there.

40:17 · jump to transcript →

I wanted to integrate certain general rules of the genre into the movie. From there you can go farther and expand. But this right here is a very typical and traditional scene for this genre. The space has this wonderful of depth in the back. And the bed in the background. The set design was by Henning von Gierke who has a spectacular sense for these things. Yes. Spectacular. Parts of this we also built ourselves. The oven and things like that. It was a former hunting lodge of party functionaries. At that point there were only lumberjacks living there. During the day you only found lumberjacks there. ...were already on the other side. Here you have this sense of foreboding and doom. I liked the gypsies so much. They were very good. Watching this reminds me of Degas' "The Execution of Emperor Maximilian" in Mexico. Yes. Careful. Not too many paintings, otherwise... That's just a sign for how interesting and good this is. This is a wonderful face. I also enjoy the way they speak. Yes, definitely. He says you should... They said the dialogue I wanted but in their language, which I believe was not Romani. They translated it themselves and did it very well. You can see this was outdoors and at night which was always a problem for me because I'm not a night person. I had to stay awake until very late, and I've always hated night shoots. I had to force myself to stay up with gallons of coffee. This is also a recurring theme in your films... Native Americans, Mexicans, and Gypsies. Something completely foreign. But also the dignity of these people.

14:47 · jump to transcript →

What a great nose this man has. He also did a really good job. Obviously none of these people had ever been in front of a camera before. Casting Bruno and Isabelle...? Because of "The Story of Adele H", Isabelle was already a big star, which wasn't true of Bruno... - No, he was a star of the theatre. ...even though he had just done "The American Friend". There were several films that had made him very well known. He wasn't a big international star, but he was already quite important for the European cinema. Did you choose the cast yourself, or was that...? Yes. I decided that myself. And Kinski as we will see. We always knew we would not make the film without Kinski. That makes sense. For Kinski... The strange thing is that even though we haven't seen him yet, you can already feel his presence. The whole film works towards that. You get closer to him. Right, that is the result of the dialogue, images, and the text. We planned how we would work towards that. In total, I believe that Kinski is in the movie for less than 17 minutes runtime. Nevertheless, he dominates it completely. ...in the graves and the undead. That is great dialogue with the undead and... For this I read a lot of the vampire literature of the 18th and 19th century, and then used parts of it. Neither Bram Stoker nor Murnau have that. You have always been interested in liturgy and things like that, right? Maybe that's the result of a traumatizing religious period when I was younger. When I was 14, I converted to Catholicism. Texts like that, liturgies, or very ritualistic things... The ritual itself. All that resonates somewhere in the background in many of my movies. Along the street... The ritualistic and liturgy necessarily are connected with the film structure and the music. Yes. I also noticed that frequently you use references to the music of the Middle Ages... Yes. Without it being spherical. It confuses me...

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All of this was also shot in Delft. You have to know that this was tricky in Delft at that time. They had had a problem with rats for years and had finally gotten it under control. With difficulty, we obtained a permit to release 11,000 rats. Where you see the water were nets. All manholes, entrances, everything was hermetically sealed. In the back of the frame near a small alley was a wooden wall which was carried out when the rats came to close. Nevertheless, we got into trouble with the population, even though we didn't lose a single rat in Delft. Really? - Yes. Unfortunately, that complicated our lives for a while. This is Lübeck. Murnau also shot a scene right in front of these buildings. Oh, this is Lübeck? - That is Lübeck. I was confused because the structure does not match Delft. Granaries in Lübeck, I believe. They still stand today. In Murnau's film you see some bushes. To the left or the right you see the large old trees they've become.

1:07:28 · jump to transcript →

There's a crew guy, and there's my dad in the background, and Reggie's mother. We made this film on a very tight budget, to say the least. And it was very ambitious in a lot of ways. And so there are a few corners that we had to scrimp along the way. Now, right there, that was the first shot of the cuda, wasn't it? Yeah, well, we'll get to that in a second. But I wanted to talk here for a moment about this...

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This is a nice bit of acting on Bill's part. The other thing that I found in trying to make a film that had some payoff in it, where you'd have the scares, is that every once in a while you could throw in one of these scenes where there is no payoff, where it's just a suspense wandering around a graveyard, and it would work because the audience knew that since we demonstrated there'd be some payoff and there'd be some more later on. Now, is this a special framing for the LaserDisc?

24:15 · jump to transcript →

There was a stop sign right in the shot that destroyed the composition, but Roberto Quezada, our visual consultant, got in the van and just happened to accelerate in the wrong direction. And the composition was perfect after that. Creative independent filmmaking. Yes.

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From this point on, from this point on, we stop looking at him in the same way. Yeah, he also becomes... Yeah, there is... He's also mad. I mean, that's... Yeah. He's right and he's romantic, but he is also insane. Isn't there a touch here of Jack Nicholson in The Shining that really he's pretty much over the edge right from the beginning? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's nowhere for him to go. He's Bruce Dern. In fact, Jack Nicholson wouldn't have done this film because he was a bit... He'd moved on to doing different types of movies. But he would have been in the frame for the casting.

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Yeah, I suppose it's sometimes now when we look at visions of the future, what we see are the absences of things like the internet and mobile phones that we absolutely now have as central to our lives, but mysteriously will have disappeared by the time of the Star Trek series. Something we haven't talked about here, as we see the drones on the screen, is that there's currently a furore about actors playing something which is outside their own actual ethnic, whatever, background. Yeah.

35:24 · jump to transcript →

the thing that runs throughout his films. And it's odd that we were talking earlier about how the science fiction aspect of this film, the background, the world building, is very poor. But on a micro level, the technology is very good. It's very credible. And it's almost like that was what he was interested in. I mean, the writers of this script, who are a very...

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Francis Ford Coppola

And so what we did is we looked through all the shots and after I had said cut, there would be maybe a few feet of just empty corridor and we took those. And you'll see later in the sequence when you cut to an empty corridor, those are just the little ends of shots that happened to be after the actor walked out of the frame, there was a little piece. So advice to directors, very often the most important stuff that you get

1:02:33 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

That actor along who has the lines in the background there is Sonny Grasso, who is one of the real fellows from the French Connection that that story is written about.

1:08:51 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

We of course didn't go to Las Vegas for the sequences in Las Vegas. These are second unit shots of signs of the period and we actually shot the scene, the interior in the hotel in New York. This is one of those really cheap second unit shots we did. I was very embarrassed by this because in the background you see there's like hippie looking guys that are not correct for period. Now we're in New York where we shot the Las Vegas sequence.

2:19:19 · jump to transcript →

At war's end, he remained in Europe and became a theatrical and vaudeville booker. Director Guy Hamilton recalls Harry Saltzman's reaction to filming on location at Circus Circus. I think Harry was very happy with the Circus Circus, using it as background, because before the war, he'd worked for an agent in France who, amongst other things, handled circuses when they were out on the road.

47:06 · jump to transcript →

And I think we had to build it on a platform to accommodate him being shoved overboard. And I think for the background, I put a lot of crinkly material on the backings to give it the sea effect. We didn't use plates or anything like that. And it's a very funny scene. Very, very funny scene. Shashlik. Tidbits.

1:55:22 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

It's a pretty neat sequence now that I think of it. We resurrected all that machinery to make the fountain work. It was sort of, I believe, a theater that wasn't being used, but it had once been used like this. I've done this in movies since I was a kid, but I remember in the early days when I was doing some nudie film, I had sort of some burlesque dance going on. I had these two actors sitting at the table in the background to see this show going on,

1:35:27 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

fascinated with the use of a camera that ultimately didn't move and actors would walk in and out of the frame and sometimes you'd be looking at nothing or sometimes it would kind of a visual style that I had evolved with Bill Butler a photographer that did the conversation but I I was feeling more

1:47:54 · jump to transcript →

Nick Pinkerton

Remember that scene by the riverbank with Bridges in the foreground, Clint in the distant background, both perfectly in focus. Characters in foreground and background all sharp and lucid. We are here in Montana in big sky country and Cimino's just going for it, getting that whole overarching bowl of the sky. Also a somewhat suggestive crotch shot if you really want to get into the

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Nick Pinkerton

but it's not the usual trajectory, particularly into narrative filmmaking. That background will be reflected in a very impactful, graphically bold visual style, and this will also be a point on which some critics will harp over the years. Singling out Cimino is a style over substance filmmaker.

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Do you know that we wanted to use this logo? This is against Richard Hartley's piano playing, I think. Of the 20th Century Fox theme. - Yes, maybe I will... We wanted to use that for the denouement. Ah. - Instead of the RKO sign. So that was interesting. Michael White and Lou Adler's names there, our producers. Yes, that's correct. - Erstwhile people. I'm rather... And now whose mouth do you think this might be? Ooh. M-m-m-mine. Yeah, it is. Now, interesting... - There we go. Course, when we did the stage play, it was you that sang this song. That's right. - And then they offered you the part of Magenta in the movie, and what did you say to them? I said-- well, they told me that I wasn't going to be able to sing the song 'cause they couldn't have an usherette open the film, so I'd lost my song "Science Fiction." And, um, I said, "Well, you can take your movie and shove it up your..." Where the sun don't shine. Yes. - Mm-hmm. And they were very amazed 'cause they'd taken me to a restaurant Yeah, yeah. - Jim Sharman. Always do it after lunch. Always tell them no after lunch. Yeah, after lunch. And I said I'm not interested. Don't want to do it. Then they took me round to John Goldstone, one of the other producers, round to his house to see the sets. They said, "No, please, Pat, come and see. Come and just have a look." And then they showed me the pink room, the laboratory. And then they showed me all the drawings of the costumes and whatever, whatever, whatever, and, um, I said, "I can't wait." "I'll begin tomorrow." I didn't mind about the song. Yeah, well, I didn't know anything about that until this moment in time and, uh... Well, I have blamed you for it ever since. Well, you see, I got along to the studio, and they'd done the backing tracks... Richard Hartley and the crew had done the backing tracks at Olympic Studios. I love my name dripping like that. Oh, yes. And... Sorry. It was a bit of a drip. And... - I said-- They said "We want you to sing the opening title song because you're the author of the show," and I said, "What do you mean, as a backing, guide vocal for Pat?" They went, "No, we want you to sing it." And, um, so I did, but until that moment in time, I had no idea that I was... Well, ladies and gentlemen, or whoever's listening, today is the first time this has been revealed in how many years? Oh, um, 25? So in all these years, I have begrudged you taking my song. And in all these years, I've begrudged you for being you and having that delightful mouth. Thank you. I mean, look, it's a wonderful mouth. One wonders, you know, oh, well, wonders, just wonders, really. Has your dentist seen this movie? Yes, I really wanted to give her a plug today. Veronica Morris. Because, really, she's been keeping my teeth in great order. This is marvelous. And Veronica'll be so pleased. This mouth, of course, is Brian Thomson's idea. It was the Man Ray photograph of the mouth and the sky is where he got that from. Yes, it... Is ita photograph or was it a painting? It's a photograph. - It's a photo. Lios Over Hollywood. Yeah. - Is that what it is? That's what it's called. It's over the Hollywood sign-- a mouth. Man Ray picture. - And this was the first mouth. I mean, I'd never seen a mouth this symbolic before. The Rolling Stones got a mouth after that, didn't they? Yeah, they got a mouth after. Not a mouth before. Bit mouthy. - A bit mouthy. No, no, and it was wonderful when they asked me to do this 'cause they asked me to do this mouth on the very last day of the film. Mm-hmm. Jim Sharman came up to me, it was a wrap, finished. We'd done it, and he came up and said, "We've got an idea about this mouth." Yeah. - "And will you do it?" And they painted all your skin black. Yes, they did, And I went out to Elstree Studios... - But your timing was perfect. I mean, your lip-sync is fantastic. Yes, well, I'm good at that. And I sort of know how you do things. So, uh, so we... We, uh... Ramon Gow. Look, the hairdresser, Ramon Gow. We'll talk about Ramon a little bit later on. Yes, he was wonderful. - Yeah. He kept us happy. Did he keep you happy? And Pierre. Pierre did the makeup, didn't he? Pierre La Roche. Oh, God. He did Bowie's makeup. You know, for what was that Bowie thing? You know, when he had the makeup. - When did Bowie never have makeup? All right, with Bowie. Ziggy Stardust. Yes, and it was fantastic. And I thought Guy La Roche will give me the most fantastic face in the world. And he looked at me, and he said, he gave me no bones... No, Pierre La Roche. - Pierre. Pierre La Roche. Guy de la Roche is... - I beg your pardon. Pierre La Roche. And I was so shocked that he just said, "We're going to totally whiten the face." And what-- here we are. And what-- here we are. And what-- here we are. The fade into the cross there. - Fade into the cross, yeah. And down the old... And now this is interesting 'cause this was just a facade, wasn't it? That little room-- There's a little room on stilts behind that door. Just tiny little room. There's darling Henry Woolf. He's just such a darling friend. A great, um, Pinter. Pierre Bedenes in the front here. Now, Perry was the boyfriend of Brian Thomson at the time. Uh, we should say... that little girl there, where is she? She's gone now, but that was... what's her name? She was the photographer that went out with Prince Andrew for a while. What was the name? - Koo Stark. Koo Stark there, yeah. She's in the back there. She's there. Uh, I was gonna point at the screen as if that made any difference. Yes, -Gaye Brown. There's Pierre. And Henry. - And Henry. Henry was in my house the other evening. He now teaches in Saskatchewan. Yeah. He's been over here doing the Harold Pinter plays, hasn't he? That's right. He was in the first play that Pinter wrote. He made him write it, actually. Well, there they are. - There's our Brad. The two lads-- so very butch. Ouch, that hurt. And there she is, Susan Sarandon. We didn't know either of these people when they arrived, did we? No, we didn't, but they... - Weren't familiar with their background. Although he'd been doing Grease on Broadway. Great dancer, great legs. But it was wonderful. - Wonderful. There's my wife there jumping up and down. My ex-wife. My first wife. Is it Kimi? - Yes, in that little plaid dress there. Yes, and that lovely handbag. - With the bangs. Yes. Gorgeous. And this is Rufus Thomas, I think, driving the car. Rufus was with the-- there he is. He was with The Living Theatre for some years. He choreographed Jesus Christ Superstar in its first British incarnation. Gosh. Such class we had in this. Oh, yeah, we were all, yes, very groovy. - I remember those two. Now there's us in the background being American Gothic. Yes, which was such a surprise to me, and it was freezing cold that day. And I swore I'd never talk about the cold again on this film... We were walking to that set the first day we ever walked to that set, and we'd smoked something rather exotic. And I'd never smoked before. - No, no. Richard really led me into really bad ways. It was a bit difficult clinging on to reality, wasn't it? It was wonderful. I loved it. Ah, there we go. - There's our signs. In the graveyard. - "Denton." "The Home of Happiness." "Dammit Janet." "Dammit Janet." "Dammit Janet." She looked very pretty. Sue Blane did some wonderful costumes, and they've really hung on, even though we do the stage show 20... well, it's longer than 25 years from the movie, the stage show. But we still use Sue's designs. She reinvents them, and it's still the same kind of look. Well, I must say, the thing... she's stunning-- is at the time... I demand that Sue Blane invented punk, and this film invented punk. And down the road was Vivienne Westwood with a shop called Sex, and she thought she'd started it, but no, sorry. She'd copied us from up the road. We were on the stage at the time. I think there's a certain amount of truth in what you say. I think we were a precursor of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne. That's correct. - But then again, you say, as Coco Chanel said, "Anyone who thinks they're original has got no sense of history." 2 If there's one fool for you Then lamit > Janet 2 I've one thing to say And that's damn it, Janet > Now look at that heart there. I want you to see that heart there, 'cause when we go back and rub it out, I think this is... Maybe it's the same heart. I thought it was a different one. Maybe they got it... There's a boom microphone shadow we'll see, I think, soon. Somewhere out there. - Why do you point out the faults? Well, why not? You know... I mean, that's what the fans do. - Do they? Yes. Oh, look, she dropped it. What a shame. Wasn't she meant to? I have no idea. - Or was she not? Now, this is interesting. This room, we could only afford this end and the other end. The altar end, and we didn't have any sides to the room, so we could only shoot it looking this way or looking the other way. We couldn't pan around 'cause there were no sides to this room. 'Cause we didn't have enough money. So there we go, you see, walking towards camera without background. Good heavens. And walking away from camera to there, but there were no sides. > Oh, Janet 2 For you? 2 I love you too } They were very good, these two, weren't they? When you consider we'd been doing this for the show... We were like a family, and they came in, and they joined in, like, so easily, so quickly. I find them astonishing. This must be... I don't want to go into detail, but it's a very small coffin, isn't it? Oh. - One does wonder. About what? Could have been a rabbit in there probably. Well, every day was a great surprise to me on Rocky Horror. I never knew what was going to happen next. Yeah, me neither. I mean, I didn't know what even American Gothic was. Till I saw the painting in the hall a few days later. I thought, "Why am I dressed like this?" Were you not familiar with that picture? - No. There we are... three good-looking people. And those opticals were rather good I thought. And those opticals were rather good I thought. And those opticals were rather good I thought. They really were mechanically derived by... But, you know, today, of course, you'd have optical wipes and all sorts of things with video. There's dear Charles Gray who's departed from us recently. Yes, Charlie has parted from us. And I loved it when you said to me it'd be wonderful if you and I were Charles Gray and Ava Gardner. We could visit each other often. Yes. - 'Cause they were great friends. They lived next door to each other. And I thought they've both gone. So we've got to now move into the same street. I think they're probably on a similar street in the sky somewhere doing the same things.

0:05 · jump to transcript →

So that interested me, the fact that it could be analogous, that Mr. Newton, there's a point in it when he says, when he's asked, where are you from? And he looks down across this great plain and on an empty road. It has the sky in the background, but he just says, I'm somewhere down there. Down there. Down on the ground or down there towards the sky? Anyway.

1:36:27 · jump to transcript →