Wright On Film

If there is one stylistic technique that has reached a point of saturation in Hollywood, then it must surely be the Snorricam, otherwise known as the “reverse steadicam” or the “chestcam.”  I would go so far as to suggest that it may even qualify as the technique of the decade. (Ok, that may be an overstatement).

It is normally used sparingly, limited to one or two uses in a film for a few seconds at a time. The Snorricam presents a reverse point-of-view shot, which positions the camera close to the actor’s face and is, most crucially, connected to the actor’s body so it responds to the actor’s actual movement. As a camera technique it has not been limited to uses in particular genres; much like the Steadicam, it has been successfully used in disparate genres, from horror films to romantic comedies. Unlike the Steadicam, though, the Snorricam is a plainly evident and rather pronounced camera technique.

The history of the technique is vague: a Google search results in a number of websites that provide DIY instructions for a home-made chestcam, but very few articles on the technique itself and its history in the movies. Modern use stems from a contraption devised by Einar Snorri Einarsson and Eiður Snorri Eysteinsson, the creative team who work under the name The Snorri Bros., though they are not actually related. According to the pair’s website, the Snorricam was created for a music video “years ago for an all girl punk band. It has since become world famous.” Indeed it has, but why have so many films of the aughts turned to this technique?

Its diffusion in contemporary film and television is certainly owed to the Snorri Bros., but the technique itself is not new. Versions of the mounted camera appear in John Frankenheimer’s loopy Seconds and Martin Scorsese’s breakout film Mean Streets. Both films use it to convey the drunken disorientation of the main characters, which also characterizes the way it has been used in more recent films, such as Requiem for a Dream (more on this film a little later). The intervening decades proved to be unremarkable for this technique, perhaps overshadowed by the far more popular Steadicam, which came to prominence with Bound for Glory and Rocky in the mid-70s. I haven’t been able to find any notable uses of the chestcam in the 80s and 90s outside of Jacob’s Ladder and Malcolm X. Were characters in the 80s not getting drunk, dashing around in a disoriented way? Hardly. Were filmmakers not interested point-of-view shots to give some sense of character psychology? I’m pretty sure they were. So, how did this nifty device not gain traction? Well, on a purely functional level, the apparatus had not yet been refined, so weight and mobility could have been a problem. It is also a fairly disruptive technique, and by that I mean it can be disorienting for the viewer — purposely so, I suppose. So, there is good reason to believe that its design is a bit radical, especially in conservative filmmaking circles.

So, how can we explain the resurgence of the Snorricam in the latter part of this decade? It might be productive to look to Darren Aronofsky’s extensive use of the device in Requiem for a Dream and Pi. On its own, Requiem has become a film student’s film, quotable not so much for its dialogue but for its dizzying visual and sound style. Its stylistic palette even became fodder for The Simpsons. Out of the various techniques Aronofsky used to convey the troubled (and troubling) lives of his characters, the chestcam shots are distinctive for two reasons. First, he holds on the shots for some time, giving the impression that the technique is actually doing something more than providing a momentary visual gimmick. Second, the shots are not mere manifestations of subjective drunkenness, but instead suggest an out-of-body disassociativeness, which are neither purely omniscient nor particularly subjective.

The chestcam appears three times in the film: when Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) flees the gang murder scene, when Marion (Jennifer Connolly) leaves the scene of her first trick, and during one of Sara’s (Ellen Burstyn) paranoid delusions. Marion’s sequence is arguably the most visceral, lasting for over a minute. Aronofsky uses two different camera rigs, one in front and one behind her, to capture her walk from the john’s apartment, down an elevator and outside into the rain where she throws up onto the lens. Overall, the dizzying quality of the chestcam works well in the film mainly because it feels connected to the other overly-stylized elements.

In 2008 and 2009, the chestcam made cameos in The Hangover, Slumdog Millionaire, Rock’n'Rolla, District 9, The Lovely Bones, and Orphan among others. It has found favor among filmmakers like Spike Lee, who has used it in Malcolm X, The 25th Hour and Inside Man. It has even found its way onto television shows like House and CSI. Similarly, the taxi cab sequence in Zodiac accomplishes the same effect when the camera is virtually mounted to the moves of the car. The camera is locked to the CG taxi in a way that is slightly disorienting. The camera moves are too perfect, too still, which makes it all the more eerie.

The technique certainly calls attention to itself, which is perhaps why it is used so briefly. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s an effective technique even though it seems to be the go-to device for contemporary directors looking to add a sense of distorted subjectivity to a particular sequence. Peter Jackson recently spoke to Ain’t it Cool News about its use in The Lovely Bones, where he opted to have Stanley Tucci carry a small camera in his own hands, pointed at his face, while running through the house in one of the film’s climactic scenes. But I’m afraid that by this point it’s reached a point of real saturation, where it’s no longer as effective at creating the needed sense of urgency or “raw” movement. While not quite a gimmick, the Snorricam reminds me of how the slow Steadicam creep-in became a de-facto horror film convention after John Carpenter used it to such great effect in Halloween.

When used in an otherwise plainly shot film, the chestcam feels out of place. By this point it’s become a standard option in a director’s bag of tricks. Directors seem to be working off of each other here, borrowing the device to convey similar points. There are other ways of portraying interior states of mind, but this one seems to be the device du jour.

Late last week Variety broke the story that Steven Spielberg was no longer attached to direct a remake of Harvey, the 1950 James Stewart fantasy about a man and his friendship with an imaginary six-foot rabbit. According to the article, production was expected to begin in early 2010 for an expected late 2010 release. At this point we don’t know why the bottom fell out of this project, but Variety hints that creative differences between team Spielberg and Robert Downey, Jr. (who was set to star) are at least partly to blame. The announcement comes after two years of similar stories about Spielberg’s “next project,” which never seem to go anywhere.

Perhaps no other director in Hollywood is attached to direct more projects than Spielberg. There is the Abraham Lincoln drama based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, starring Liam Neeson. Tony Kushner, who co-wrote Munich, is apparently doing rewrites. There is The Trial of the Chicago 7, about the protests that erupted at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, which is now scheduled for release in 2010 with Ben Stiller directing. There is The 39 Clues, an adventure story based on a series of popular children’s books about a globe-trotting family, which is also in rewrites. There is Oldboy, supposedly based on the Garon Tsuchiya comic not the Chan-wook Park film. There is talk of a Matt Helm project, based on the Donald Hamilton espionage novels. There is Interstellar, the sci-fi project written by Jonathan Nolan. In recent months there has also been speculation that a fifth Indy adventure could be in the cards, along with a fourth Jurassic Park movie.

All of these projects have been spotlighted by trade papers like Variety, which in turn feeds the blogosphere, fan sites, and forums, where speculation often turns into geeky hysteria. The recent Talkback for the Harvey story at Ain’t it Cool News offers commentary from all sides: “FINALLY!!! Something Spielberg ISN’T doing for a change,” “Why, it’s Spielberg’s canceled project of the week,” and “This didn’t need to be remade.” It’s not surprising that there’s interest in these projects, but what happens when they are never made?

Never Mades

On one side, we follow the production status of these projects to the point where we can often imagine the completed film before it’s released. Casting decisions, leaked production art, covert on-set photography, script leaks, and the ever-reliable word of mouth from “sources close to the production” all contribute to our attachment to these projects. On the other side, the productions themselves have often spent millions of pre-production dollars developing the script, casting, sketching out storyboards and concept art. What happens to all this work? It’s either stored somewhere or thrown away, rarely to be seen again, unless the film itself is resurrected at some future point.

The Harvey story got me thinking about all the films that reached some stage of pre-production but were ultimately never made. Spielberg’s catalog of almost-mades is large indeed, but several of these films have gone on to be made by other directors. For years, he held on to Memoirs of a Geisha but finally released it to Rob Marshall. If it wasn’t for Spielberg, then Kubrick’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence would never have been made. But some things like Harvey just don’t go anywhere (yet). And we’re likely never to see Spielberg’s notes, art, and design for the film.

What do these never-mades tell us about the filmmakers behind them? When we consider a filmmaker’s output we never consider the films that were almost made. Would it be a stretch to say that we could learn a lot about the creative process if we could study these almost movies? These phantom projects can provide real insight into a filmmaker’s stylistic palette at a particular time in his/her career. Besides knowing what happened to sink the ship, we could learn valuable information about what attracted a filmmaker (not limited to a director) to the project.

Almost, But Not Quite

Alfred Hitchcock was to have made The Short Night after Family Plot, but the director’s deteriorating health derailed the project at Universal. A completed screenplay was published by the author, David Freeman, in the book The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock. Wikipedia even has a page devoted to  Hitchcock’s unproduced projects. In 2007 Martin Scorsese put together a short film based on a bare-bones 3-page treatment prepared for Hitchcock, called The Key to Reserva. It can be viewed here. You gotta love Scorsese’s passion for the material: “It’s one thing to preserve a film that has been made. It’s another to preserve a film that has not been made. … I’m obviously not going to shoot it the way I would. But can I shoot them as Hitchcock? I don’t think so. So who will I shoot them as? This is the question…this is the process.” Priceless.

There’s no question that Scorsese shot the sequence with Hitch in mind. The camera angles, pacing, and even the music suggest an oddly familiar Hitchcockian flavor. Some of these choices were inspired by the script treatment, while others seem to represent Scorsese’s attempt to channel the stylistic signature of the old master. He is right to say that the result isn’t quite Hitchcock, nor is it Scorsese. It’s Hitchcock through Scorsese. I can only imagine a filmmaker in forty years channeling Scorsese from an unproduced treatment. Say, the long gestating Sinatra project.

The Scorsese experiment reveals very little about the aborted Hitch project or Hitch’s own stylistic impulses. Since he never made the film — or The Short Night, for that matter — we can only speculate as to how he would have approached the tone, look, and sound of these projects. Scorsese indulges in a way that any of us would with an unproduced Hitchcock script: he interprets the material as he knew Hitch would. Or, the way we assume he would.

In Hitchcock’s case, health issues were the determining factor in sealing The Short Night’s fate; Harvey seems to have suffered from “creative differences.” But budget considerations seem to be the biggest factor in Hollywood’s ability to sink projects that are in some form of production. Which leads me to the one of the most storied never-mades in film history: Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon project. In fact, Taschen books has just released a mammoth volume which compiles all of Kubrick’s notes, photographs, script treatments, and other pre-production materials in the aptly titled “Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made.”

Allison Castle, who previously published the Kubrick Archive for Taschen — an outstanding collection of Kubrick’s sketches, notes, and other materials from all of his films (and some of his never-mades) — has seemingly done the work for film scholars by packaging the bulk of Kubrick’s notes and other research materials in one place. I say “seemingly” because I have yet to actually see the tome myself. Castle’s work on the Archive was outstanding, so I expect nothing less here. Then again, I would be satisfied with anything released on the Napoleon project.

I remember hearing about the film a dozen years ago when I was just getting acquainted with Kubrick’s works. Back then there was still hope that he might mount a return to the film, but that sadly never happened. There was also The Aryan Papers, which receives some attention in the Archive. It’s rumored that Kubrick abandoned the film in the early 90s after he learned that Spielberg was producing his own Holocaust drama.

Scholarly Matters

Even with internet leaks and trade press attention, we are rarely given access to actual production materials from unfinished projects, which makes it extremely hard for budding film scholars to uncover very much. Castle’s work on the Kubrick archive is special but incredibly rare. Indeed, the Kubrick Archive revealed for all to see that the final act of A.I. was planned that way by Kubrick not by Spielberg. Here is one instance where early concept art and story notes have been used to dispel rumors and conjecture that Spielberg diluted Kubrick’s vision by tacking on a “happy” ending.

I have always been fascinated with the markings of the creative process: handwritten revisions on a screenplay draft, development conversations and roundtables, concept art, musical outtakes and alternates. When the Star Wars scores were re-released in 1997 (to coincide with the theatrical re-releases), I was amazed to find a selection of outtakes from the main title, which were “hidden” on an unlisted track. Included were the first few takes of the cue, which contain slightly different orchestration and timing. It felt as if I was transported to that London scoring stage back in 1977 and was hearing it for the first time along with the engineers and orchestra.

These uncompleted projects all share a certain cachet because they are shrouded in mystery. We will never know, but we can certainly imagine how good they could have been. I doubt Napoleon was going to be the greatest film ever made, but we’ll never know, will we? All we have are the frayed pieces of the puzzle. To be sure, I have only scratched the surface with films that were never made. If you have a favorite, please share it. I’d love to compile a list of almost-mades.

Variety Reserve

On a completely unrelated note I was very disappointed to find out that Variety is ending its three year “experiment” of free access to its online content. From now on, unsubscribed users will have extremely limited access to the site, amounting to something like a handful of articles per month. From now on the site will charge upwards of $250 for an annual subscription that will provide full access to its digital content. Turns out that the trade paper is happy to narrow its readership to industry-only folks, leaving the rest of us to either pay up or move on to other sources of industry news. According to a Huffington Post article on the matter:

“The vast majority of Variety’s subscribers are in the entertainment industry, and so are the advertisers. Because these agents, studios and other companies in the trade seek readers in the industry, they care less about the general audiences that had read the site for free, Stiles said. About 95 percent of Variety’s advertisers buy spots on the Web site and in print.”

I, for one, count Variety as an incredible resource for my research and general interest in the Hollywood film industry. The film reviews are concise, thoughtful, and well-rounded pieces of pop film criticism — especially those by Todd McCarthy. Their attention to fine-grained details like editing, scoring, sound design, and photography is unique among trade press and newspaper reviews. I also find their broader articles on trends, profiles, and other matters of craft to be pretty informative. So it’s disheartening to see the publication go the way of the pay wall. Oh well, either I’ll pay the piper or try The Hollywood Reporter, which still remains a free resource.

On a brighter note, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! I’ll be back soon with some thoughts on the decade that was, including a year-end list that has been ten years in the making.

It’s the end of November, which means Wright on Film has been dark for nearly two months. Yikes! I think that’s a record. With my thesis and teaching load, I have had little time for anything else, especially things related to cinema. As my course winds down for the term I thought it might be time to share some of what I’ve been up to.

Lately, I’ve been mired in the practical world of sound production, learning how to write about the norms and conventions of this particular facet of modern Hollywood. Like any element of the American film industry, the sound chain represents a site of cultural production. There are union dynamics, hierarchies within the employment system, shared aesthetic conventions, and complex relationships with technology. The sound chain itself is a spider’s web of different duties and departments, which are amazingly connected by one governing rule: the story.

At every level of the sound chain, story remains the guiding light for nearly every element of sound style. From Foley to the final mix, every squeak, tweak, and dub is motivated by the oldest question in the Hollywood playbook: how will this affect the story? This Hollywood chestnut anchors the sensibilities of the sound crew, so that everyone is on the same creative page. Go too far with a bone crunch and it loses its meaning within a scene; don’t go far enough and it loses its emotional impact. Dialog editors, too, are gatekeepers of clear and intelligible speech. If someone swallows their line or the production track is too noisy, the main goal of any dialog clean-up artist is to sift through alternate, usable takes. Here, “usable” means intelligible.

You might think that this is a fairly constrained way to work, but artists in most mediums work within some set of boundaries. For many sound professionals, constraints offer creative flexibility — however strange that sounds. But limitations in the form of norms and conventions can be profoundly liberating, especially when working under tight schedules and even tighter budgets with which modern Hollywood sound crews are faced. A re-recording mixer recently told me that there is still room for experimentation even in the most programmed summer blockbuster. But that room is quite small. The mixer suggested that if you needed to work in a creative environment without boundaries, then Hollywood sound production was not for you. At the same time, those same blockbusters offer the sound artist unparalleled access to new technology and, perhaps most important, the chance to collaborate with other creative types who are at the top of their field.

In this sense, my work in film sound has revealed the extent to which boundaries inspire creative decisions. James Horner, the composer of Titanic and the upcoming Avatar, has suggested that unlimited creative options can often be more constraining to one’s work than simply working within a bounded set of options. Which is why story appears to dominate the goals of most Hollywood sound practitioners. Given the demands of the narrative, sound can shape its contours and emphasize (or de-emphasize) certain elements that the image cannot properly convey. In the case of Avatar, Horner’s musical score is “more accessible. We tried some experiments with really weird stuff and ended up alienating the visuals. It was so overwhelming. It’s good to be a little more conservative.”

We often separate the work of composers from the rest of sound production, but Horner’s sensibilities are no different than the work of sound editors. Faced with an elaborate car chase, the sound editor must choose certain elements to emphasize and others that will be sacrificed for the sake of narrative clarity. Unless otherwise directed to include a particular sound element, the editor composes the sequence the same way Horner works with the picture to emphasize certain gestures and movements with his music.

While Avatar afforded him an opportunity to create new sounds for the alien Na’vi culture, the horizon of possibilities was ultimately too wide, and he returned to more familiar orchestral territory. This may enrage critics of Horner’s work, who accuse him of recycling his own melodies in score after score. But I believe the calls for plagiarism have less to do with compositional conservatism than with aesthetic convention. Horner has often stated in interviews that the function of his music should serve the dramatic arc of the story and character goals. Without a clear sense of the narrative, he admits that he has trouble finding the purpose of the music. This reliance on story can also explain why he favors certain orchestrations and instrumentations. It is also why composers often return to familiar idioms when faced with action sequences, love scenes, or comic moments. There is no mistaking a Jerry Goldsmith action cue or a John Barry love theme because these types of scenes sound a certain way to these composers. Goldsmith hardly spoke about the mechanics of his working style because for him it simply made sense to score a scene in a particular way. “How did you come up with that theme?” is one of the most common questions that composers are asked, and yet their answers are rarely satisfying. When asked by Peter Bogdanovich how he shot a particularly memorable sequence in Stagecoach, John Ford famously sniped, “With a camera!”

The intangibility of the creative process offers us few avenues of insight to this particular problem, but shifting our focus to questions of “why” may yield some greater insights into the conventional logic of composers like James Horner. Why were certain tonalities chosen over others? Why a particular focus on this character? Why no music in certain passages?

As original and fresh as the Avatar score may be, Horner’s compositional approach has not changed; indeed, the function of his music remains the same. The orchestral colors may be new, but the structural DNA of the music reflects Horner’s conventional logic. In this sense, convention is less a pejorative term than one that defines an aesthetic approach, including the function of music in any particular sequence.

Hollywood craftspeople have been complaining about shrinking budgets and shorter schedules for decades. And yet I have never read of a composer or sound editor admit that extremely long schedules produce better or more innovative work than shorter ones. Perhaps this may not be the case with visual effects artists, who often require more time to fine-tune FX shots. Horner has experience at both extremes. Ransom and Troy were scored in fewer than 14 days; The New World and Avatar were written and scored over a period of months due to picture changes. And yet even with so much time, he needed to adapt quickly to the editorial changes and sometimes drop or rewrite entire cues to fit the new assembly. Alfred Newman once said that if one was not prepared to work quickly and sacrifice personal taste in favor of what was needed to better tell the story, then one should avoid work in film music. As much as craftspeople complain about short schedules, there is nothing quite like a deadline to inspire the most creative solutions and innovative breakthroughs at all levels of production.

There is still so much to learn about the process of film production, especially the structured environment of Hollywood post production. Not surprisingly, it’s also one of the hardest things to teach, because film students at the undergraduate and graduate levels are generally accustomed to analyzing films for broad-based cultural, social, and authorial meanings. To study a group of films and ask why certain choices were made is difficult not only because we rarely have access to filmmakers, but also because we have yet to develop a solid framework with which to study these issues productively.

This is not an intentionalist argument, since I am not concerned with intention as much as I am interested in the process that led to a particular decision. For example, James Cameron might have given Horner a particular direction for his score — an intent — but I am interested in studying how Horner juggled that request with his own frames of reference and horizon of possibilities.

Update 11/28/09: A new interview with James Horner has been posted by Daniel Schweiger. Although not as long and in depth as the 2006 discussion, Horner provides some context for this creative decisions on Avatar, and speaks a little about the current state of film music. It’s definitely worth a listen.

Editorial note: I have tried to locate a lengthy interview Horner gave to Daniel Schweiger from “On the Score” in 2006, but the links have disappeared. Hopefully the audio will be reposted at some point, because it offers a candid and honest discussion of the composer’s style and his ideas on the functions of modern film music.

Earlier this month, while flipping through the Toronto International Film Festival program guide, I glanced past the inclusion of a spotlight on Tel Aviv filmmakers, which encompassed a set of ten films. Frankly, I didn’t think much of it, since it’s common for the Fest to profile a city or country with a vibrant and emerging film culture. I made a note of the other Israeli films on offer, as I normally do, and moved on to other categories. Around the same time, I started to hear the faint murmurs of a protest aimed at TIFF, with the Tel Aviv selection at its focus.

At first it seemed to be a local skirmish, covered by the Toronto papers, with brief mention on local news — but nothing broader than that. Then, within a day or so, there was a group of names attached to the protest: Jane Fonda, Harry Belafonte, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, John Greyson. I was in disbelief that a group of prominent Canadian and American personalities would try to censor the work of Tel-Aviv filmmakers simply for being from Tel Aviv.

Surprisingly, they did not call for a boycott of the Festival. Remember, some of the voices of dissent had films premiering here (Viggo Mortensen with The Road, for one). So instead, they aimed their outrage at the Festival programmers and organizers who chose Tel Aviv as the spotlighted city. Around went a petition, encouraging more dissenters to lend their names to the growing protest. I guess they wanted ticket-buyers to avoid the Tel Aviv program, or at least share an unkind word with Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling, the Festival’s co-directors.

Arguing that TIFF is helping to support “brand Israel” and promote the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s new advertising campaign, the protesters stated that the Festival “has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.” Strong words from a group of people who had yet to see the ten films comprising the program. No matter if the films glorified or critiqued Israeli domestic policy, these folks were acting on principle. Never mind that these films were made by talented individuals, who likely spent months or years making their film projects. In my view, these artists deserved better than to be the subject of a misdirected attempt to raise awareness to a controversial subject.

I felt compelled to respond to this story not because I saw the need to defend fellow Jews, but because so much of this protest is misdirected, uninformed, and ignorant. We can speculate on the reaction that another controversial choice may have garnered — say, Tehran. Iranian filmmakers have for decades been lauded for pushing cultural, aesthetic, and political boundaries within their own film community. Would the same folks who protested the Israeli spotlight have had the same worries over an Iranian focus?

Obviously, not all Iranian films support Iranian government policy. Several Iranian films have attempted to push back against the fundamentalist nature of the government regime (see the films of Mohsen Makhmalbaf). The fact is, Israel and its cities remain politicized targets, even as Israeli filmmakers attempt to reach a global audience with thoughtful stories and commentaries. Why should an intimate story (The Bubble) about dealing with modern life in Tel Aviv, warts and all, be treated as a site for international conflict? Why not celebrate the technique and artistry of the film, as well as its confrontation with some very delicate issues, including homosexuality, fundamentalism, and nationalism.

In fact, one voice of dissent, Canadian filmmaker John Greyson lamented the lack of focus on Palestinian films at TIFF 09 to offset the strong Israeli contingent. Actually there were a handful of films by Palestinian filmmakers on the Festival roster. I seriously wonder if the next time Greyson applies for a funding grant from the government of Canada if he will see the irony in that decision. Anyone on this side of the border knows that Canada Council grants and others like it aim to promote a certain–some might say restrictive–image of Canadian arts to Canadians and a global audience. Some might call it “Brand Canada.”

The double-standard at play here seems pretty obvious. I may not support everything the Israeli government does, but that should not preclude me from supporting individual filmmakers, who have a story to tell.

In the last few days of the Festival a counter-protest finally emerged. On the front page of the Toronto Star were two sets of photographs — one with Tel Aviv supporters and the other with the original protesters. Of course, most of the counter-protesters were Jewish personalities in film and television, which will simply reaffirm the notion that Jews will support Israel at any cost. I can’t speak for people like David Cronenberg and Natalie Portman, but maybe these filmmakers also realize that censoring a group of filmmakers for belonging to a city, a culture, and a religion should not be tolerated by anyone, especially those who seek to speak for minorities. You don’t have to be Jewish to see that.

Now with that out of the way, here are some thoughts on a few of the films we caught at TIFF this year.

Waking Sleeping Beauty

The highlight of the Festival was, for me, the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. Getting its world premiere here in Toronto (after a sneak preview in Telluride the previous week), the film offers a glimpse behind the scenes of one of the most celebrated periods in animation history: Walt Disney Studios’ resurgence in the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties. From The Black Cauldron to The Lion King, filmmakers Peter Schneider and Don Hahn utilize found footage (mostly home videos) to explore the corporate culture at Disney and the relationship between Disney animators and the executives who wrote their paychecks. The tone of the film is captured best in an early scene, where we are shown outtakes from a corporate video presented by Michael Eisner, Disney’s CEO at the time. Eisner smiles and congratulates the crew of The Lion King on a job well done, then looks off camera, loses the smile and snaps, “That good enough?” He looks tired, defeated, and angry. Apparently, he was. While the Disney animators have a lot to say in the film about their work and crazy schedules, the picture belongs to Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who emerge as great Shakespearean characters at a time when the company was producing some of the most memorable and successful films. Eisner comes off as the better man, even after his two-faced display in the corporate video. While Eisner seems genuinely interested in the quality of Disney animation, Katzenberg has trouble connecting to his employees — the animators. He struggles to communicate, and when he does he ends up angering them even more with his aloofness. Interspersed with the found footage are high-def snippets of the films themselves, which have never looked better — from The Little Mermaid to Aladdin to Beauty and the Beast. It’s all topped by a moving section that details the work of Howard Ashman, the co-composer of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, who died of AIDS before Beast was completed. We were told that the film will be released in April. When it comes to your town, be sure to check it out.

The Hole

I was excited to see Joe Dante’s new film, which turned out to be the first 3-D film ever exhibited at TIFF. The Hole is a predictable, if somewhat uneven, horror tale that represents the first live-action 3-D film I have seen since Captain EO back in the eighties. Dante’s use of 3-D is surprisingly underwhelming since he avoids the obvious z-axis stingers and arranges his 3-D mise en scene with subtle depth. Foreground and background planes are noticeably more pronounced, but focal problems were apparent. This may not be a glitch with the 3-D process, but a rack-focus error that occasionally threw the background into sharp focus when the foreground action was unintentionally blurry. In several sequences, Dante is in fine form, as he cleverly mixes humor with genuinely frightening imagery. The bathroom sequence is a real highlight, as is any scene with the demonic clown doll. During our screening, however, the fire alarm was pulled fifteen minutes before the end of the film, which forced us to abandon our seats and exit the theater. Looks like we’ll have to catch the rest of it some other time.

Get Low

This is a low key affair with Robert Duvall in a rare starring role and Bill Murray in another memorable supporting part. This might be Bill Murray’s first period piece, actually. The film takes place in the early part of the 20th century, with Duvall playing a feared recluse who one day decides to drive into town on his donkey-drawn cart to ask the local priest for a living funeral. He intends to “get low” (i.e. down to business) and wishes to stage a funeral so he can hear what people really think of him. Duvall plays it close to the chest, emoting only when he absolutely must. As Murray’s character says late in the film, “Is it just me, or is he extremely articulate when he wants to be?” It’s still looking for a distributor, which will hopefully happen, since Duvall and Murray are terrific in the scenes they share together. First-time feature director Aaron Schneider stays away from “homespun” cliches and lets the story breathe on its own without showy editing, camera movement, or musical choices. Getting to see Murray and Duvall in person was a real treat, along with Richard Zanuck whose son Dean produced the film.

Les Herbes Folles

I was looking forward to Alain Resnais’ newest film, Les Herbes Folles, but left the screening scratching my head. Was he being deliberately playful with his narrative structure and tone? It was slowly building to a romantic pay-off, or at least an ironic punchline, but instead Resnais pulled out the rug from under us, and we were left with a seemingly unrelated and unmotivated question: when a young girl becomes a cat, will she be able to eat cat munchies? The audience, almost in unison, shouted “Huh?” when the screen cut to black. For most of the film Resnais hooked me with a rather simple love story that begins with a woman losing her purse and a lonely house husband retrieving it for her. He falls for her and finds it hard to stop thinking about the stranger whose wallet he found. He fantasizes about her, while she seems completely uninterested in his advances, and seems only content flying her plane. Maybe someone needs to explain this one to me.

Good Hair

Lastly, I wanted to mention Chris Rock’s documentary on African-American hair, called Good Hair. As a white man myself I never knew the complexities associated with black hair. Rock does a good job as on-camera interviewer and voice-over narrator, taking us through the many ways women style their hair. As the father of two young daughters, Rock sees himself as protector and educator. He digs deep and examines the social and cultural roots of what constitutes “natural” black hair (i.e. white Eurpoean hair), and the lengths black women will go to achieve straight, bouncy hair. There’s the highly toxic chemical, sodium hydroxide, which is the main ingredient in most relaxers. Rock and a scientist show how prolonged exposure to the hydroxide will disintegrate a soda can, even though it is commonly used on toddlers and young girls. To explain the origins of weave hair, Rock travels to India and finds that thousands of young women routinely shave their heads as part of a religious ceremony. This hair is then processed, dyed, cleaned and eventually sold to African-American women. Rev. Al Sharpton offers some insightful commentary, as do several other prominent celebrities.

Reading up on TIFF coverage in Variety and other trade sources, it sounds as if this was a pretty mediocre year in terms of film quality and acquisitions. Some blame the recession on the slow acquisition of titles by major distributors, others blame the quality of films for the slow sales. The film Creation, about the relationship between Charles and Emma Darwin, left the Festival without an American distributor, leaving some to wonder if its subject matter would prove too controversial for American audiences or if the film just isn’t that good. I was surprised to see Get Low leave the Festival without a major distributor either — even though the film’s pedigree (produced by the Zanucks, starring Murray and Duvall) suggests that it would be a no-brainer for anyone interested. Which is why I was relieved to hear that Waking Sleeping Beauty will actually get a release, unlike the 2002 behind-the-scenes-at-Disney doc, The Sweatbox. Many other notable features went home without a deal, making it the topic of conversation in the TIFF post mortem. Check out Roger Ebert’s blog post about some other titles that may not be coming to a theater near you.

It’s always a shame that none of the films my wife and I love are ever recognized by the TIFF award juries. This year, Precious: Based On the Novel Push By Sapphire won the People’s Choice Award, which seems to be building Oscar momentum. Last year we thought JCVD was a shoe-in for the audience prize, but then Slumdog Millionaire premiered. As a consolation, it was nice to see that the documentary category finally became eligible this year for the People’s Choice Award. Which is why we were keeping our fingers crossed for Waking Sleeping Beauty to take home that prize. Oh well.