INTRODUCTION:
Welcome to outsideAbox, my side-blog for pitching film ideas inspired by films viewed in the Outside The Box module, at Staffs Uni, lead by Alex Crowton. The films viewed were as follows:
The idea is to create three film ideas, potentially to be made in my third year inspired by the work above. The films that effected me most were Brick, Gonzo, and Breathless, and all the ideas are spawned from elements present in those pictures.
The three pitches can be found as pages in the tab above (or to the right, depending where you're reading the introduction.) Alternatively they can be found here:
23 April 2010
22 April 2010
Youth Project
PROJECT PROPOSAL #3
I've always tried to make films about things I know, whether those be hobbies or life experiences. I've tried in the past to make a film about 'what it is to be young', but feel I likely failed. Now that I'm a few years older, I feel I'm mature enough to try and create a film in that period of life successfully.
Because the genre is such a large one and can range from all sorts of films, from Brick to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 'youth' would just be the starting point and I would craft a narrative around it, such as the story of a difficult break up, and an immature person trying to come to terms with it, while in the grander scale of things also trying to find their place in the world. I feel this could be written into a short.
INFLUENCES:
One of the influences on my desire to do this was Tony Richardson's Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner. More so that other films I'd seen, it makes a real (and strong) attempt to tell a narrative about what its like to be a rebellious youth against the back drop of a controlling academic private school.
STYLE:
Stylistically, the film would be a continuation of the ideals previously laid out (ie, freedom/confusion) in this pitch. The first would be the use of a handheld camera, which has become very popular lately but first gained notority in Breathless.
I feel handheld would be most appropriate to the narrative, as it has that manic youthful energy that tripod or crane shots lack. Godard himself used it because he wanted the film to feel like a documentary, to lend an authenticity to the picture. Because I live in an age where these type of effects are quite common, I wouldn't have to worry the audience would be confused thinking it was a documentary.
The other element I'm influenced by in Breathless is their groundbreaking jump cuts. Nobody is quite sure why Godard did it (several theories are present in the previous link) in the first place, although most accept the idea he had significantly over-shot and needed to shorten the film dramatically.
Whatever the reason, the manic energy it gives the film would be highly suitable for a picture about young characters on the brink of starting their lives. Also at times the cuts can be confusing for the audience to follow, which also would be appropriate, seeing as its about characters often confused by themselves and their surroundings.
I've always tried to make films about things I know, whether those be hobbies or life experiences. I've tried in the past to make a film about 'what it is to be young', but feel I likely failed. Now that I'm a few years older, I feel I'm mature enough to try and create a film in that period of life successfully.
Because the genre is such a large one and can range from all sorts of films, from Brick to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 'youth' would just be the starting point and I would craft a narrative around it, such as the story of a difficult break up, and an immature person trying to come to terms with it, while in the grander scale of things also trying to find their place in the world. I feel this could be written into a short.
INFLUENCES:
One of the influences on my desire to do this was Tony Richardson's Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner. More so that other films I'd seen, it makes a real (and strong) attempt to tell a narrative about what its like to be a rebellious youth against the back drop of a controlling academic private school.
STYLE:
Stylistically, the film would be a continuation of the ideals previously laid out (ie, freedom/confusion) in this pitch. The first would be the use of a handheld camera, which has become very popular lately but first gained notority in Breathless.
I feel handheld would be most appropriate to the narrative, as it has that manic youthful energy that tripod or crane shots lack. Godard himself used it because he wanted the film to feel like a documentary, to lend an authenticity to the picture. Because I live in an age where these type of effects are quite common, I wouldn't have to worry the audience would be confused thinking it was a documentary.
The other element I'm influenced by in Breathless is their groundbreaking jump cuts. Nobody is quite sure why Godard did it (several theories are present in the previous link) in the first place, although most accept the idea he had significantly over-shot and needed to shorten the film dramatically.
Whatever the reason, the manic energy it gives the film would be highly suitable for a picture about young characters on the brink of starting their lives. Also at times the cuts can be confusing for the audience to follow, which also would be appropriate, seeing as its about characters often confused by themselves and their surroundings.
Noir Project
PROJECT PROPOSAL #2
The second film I'm proposing, is a modern noir tale, with a twist - set in England. The story follows John, an old police Sargent who has long ago retired since shooting and killing someone who later turned out to be innocent. He keeps his gun and his badge in a display case on his mantlepiece.
The narrative is set around his daughter who goes missing. Fearing the police have become lazy and corrupt since he left them, John takes matters into his own hands after deciding the mystery is more likely to be a kidnapping.
The story would follow the narrative devices inherent in all noirs, twists and turns, troubled protagonists, femme fatals and a dark ending.
STYLE:
The cinematography would be very reminiscent of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
The heavy contrasts often seen when entire portions of the frame would be filled with shadow would be repeated in the film. I would not however want to take the Sci-Fi futuristic look of that film, as I wish for this to be timeless.
From a narrative point of view, much would be owed to Rian Johnson's Brick. The most prominent thing Brick does is take a noir film, the story of which has been done numerous times, and put a new spin on it by setting it in a high school. In an interview, Johnson states:
"The decision to set it in high school was, initially at least, just to give it a different set of visual cues, so you couldn't just take a glimpse at guys in hats and shadowy alleyways and switch your brain into "I know what this is" autopilot mode. I wanted people to experience the genre in an unexpected way."
I liked the idea of telling a story the audience was already familiar with, but in a new exciting way like Johnson had. It seemed very natural to me that a noir story take place in England. Many of the American archtypes are also present in the United Kingdom, such as the dense Cities and especially the heavy rain fall, which seems even more fitting for England than the US.
Another feature present in 'Brick' is the very unique dialogue. Johnson knew setting the film in a school with a young cast, their vocabulary should be different to his, but he didn't want to use modern linguistics for fear of dating the film - so he created his own. Its a rough homage/parody of the style of old noir films:
I too am aware that trying to write modern words and phrases into a story very quickly dates it, so I'd be looking to do the same thing in creating a hybrid between real present-day wording and old 'noir-relevant' styles of language. This, along with an old style wardbrobe would keep it unique enough that it could stay relevant for a lot longer than usual.
As previously mentioned, I'd also be following Brick's example in costume design. That film presents typical noir gear (brown coats, dark clothing) throughout the film but without drawing attention to it by putting a modern spin on everything. This kind of subtely is perfect for setting a story so 'Americanised' in another country.
The second film I'm proposing, is a modern noir tale, with a twist - set in England. The story follows John, an old police Sargent who has long ago retired since shooting and killing someone who later turned out to be innocent. He keeps his gun and his badge in a display case on his mantlepiece.
The narrative is set around his daughter who goes missing. Fearing the police have become lazy and corrupt since he left them, John takes matters into his own hands after deciding the mystery is more likely to be a kidnapping.
The story would follow the narrative devices inherent in all noirs, twists and turns, troubled protagonists, femme fatals and a dark ending.
STYLE:
The cinematography would be very reminiscent of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
The heavy contrasts often seen when entire portions of the frame would be filled with shadow would be repeated in the film. I would not however want to take the Sci-Fi futuristic look of that film, as I wish for this to be timeless.
From a narrative point of view, much would be owed to Rian Johnson's Brick. The most prominent thing Brick does is take a noir film, the story of which has been done numerous times, and put a new spin on it by setting it in a high school. In an interview, Johnson states:
"The decision to set it in high school was, initially at least, just to give it a different set of visual cues, so you couldn't just take a glimpse at guys in hats and shadowy alleyways and switch your brain into "I know what this is" autopilot mode. I wanted people to experience the genre in an unexpected way."
I liked the idea of telling a story the audience was already familiar with, but in a new exciting way like Johnson had. It seemed very natural to me that a noir story take place in England. Many of the American archtypes are also present in the United Kingdom, such as the dense Cities and especially the heavy rain fall, which seems even more fitting for England than the US.
Another feature present in 'Brick' is the very unique dialogue. Johnson knew setting the film in a school with a young cast, their vocabulary should be different to his, but he didn't want to use modern linguistics for fear of dating the film - so he created his own. Its a rough homage/parody of the style of old noir films:
I too am aware that trying to write modern words and phrases into a story very quickly dates it, so I'd be looking to do the same thing in creating a hybrid between real present-day wording and old 'noir-relevant' styles of language. This, along with an old style wardbrobe would keep it unique enough that it could stay relevant for a lot longer than usual.
As previously mentioned, I'd also be following Brick's example in costume design. That film presents typical noir gear (brown coats, dark clothing) throughout the film but without drawing attention to it by putting a modern spin on everything. This kind of subtely is perfect for setting a story so 'Americanised' in another country.
Bill Finger - Noblemania Research
Also found this very interesting blog, written by a comic-book fan in the procress of writing a book about Finger, explaining his significance to Batman and comics in general. Whats particularly interesting about this blog however is that it has interviews with people such as Finger's writing partner and widow. This makes it stand-out against all other writing about Finger, because it is actually about the man, not the material he created. Before this blog, there were only 2 photos of Finger in known existance, but now there are several more.
The blog is dozens of entries long and so far too detailed to be copied here, however I've attached a link to his work, which only shows relevant material.
Marc Tyler Nobleman
The blog is dozens of entries long and so far too detailed to be copied here, however I've attached a link to his work, which only shows relevant material.
Marc Tyler Nobleman
Bill Finger Research - Dial B
The link contains what would be the basis of the documentary, detailing the creation of Batman in three parts. It examines in precious detail what massive contributions Finger made to the superhero creation, and the seemingly little the credited Kane did - who was essentially a glorified production manager, despite claiming to pencil, ink and write every issue.
It is perhaps too long to paste into this blog, hence merely the link(s).
PART ONE
Has a through write-up of how the character was first created, and why. Explains that the character Bob Kane actually created was a man in a red jumpsuit called Birdman, who then brought it to Finger, who created the true Batman. Also discusses the first issue.
PART TWO
Focuses on Finger mostly, demonstrating what other characters he created, and explains how DC eventually found out about the writer Kane had been hiding, and hired him. States that his timid nature meant Kane walked all over him.
PART THREE
Focuses mostly on Kane, and the acts he commited after Finger had died, such as backdating forgeries in a mostly fake autobiography to continue his false claim he created Batman alone.
All three are very interesting reads, especially for writing and comic-book fans.
It is perhaps too long to paste into this blog, hence merely the link(s).
PART ONE
Has a through write-up of how the character was first created, and why. Explains that the character Bob Kane actually created was a man in a red jumpsuit called Birdman, who then brought it to Finger, who created the true Batman. Also discusses the first issue.
PART TWO
Focuses on Finger mostly, demonstrating what other characters he created, and explains how DC eventually found out about the writer Kane had been hiding, and hired him. States that his timid nature meant Kane walked all over him.
PART THREE
Focuses mostly on Kane, and the acts he commited after Finger had died, such as backdating forgeries in a mostly fake autobiography to continue his false claim he created Batman alone.
All three are very interesting reads, especially for writing and comic-book fans.
Bill Finger Wikipedia Research
Bill Finger was an American writer of comic-books in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Working with Bob Kane in 1939, the duo created a Superman follow-up whose popularity would eclipse even the man of steel himself - Batman. Bob Kane didn't tell DC Comics about Finger's involvement, and so they credited Kane solely for the creation of Batman.
Even after this, he continued to write the issues and went on to create most of the mythology Batman is most famed for, while his partner became rich. He died young, an unknown and penniless alcoholic. His work is still unacknowledged. The following is the wikipedia article on Bill Finger.
Even after this, he continued to write the issues and went on to create most of the mythology Batman is most famed for, while his partner became rich. He died young, an unknown and penniless alcoholic. His work is still unacknowledged. The following is the wikipedia article on Bill Finger.
Bill Finger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bill Finger | |
|---|---|
 Bill Finger, portrait by Jerry Robinson. | |
| Born | William Finger February 8, 1914 |
| Died | January 18, 1974 (aged 59) Manhattan |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer |
| Notable works | Batman, Detective Comics, Green Lantern |
William "Bill" Finger (February 8, 1914 – January 18, 1974) was an American comic strip and comic book writer best known as the uncredited co-creator, with Bob Kane, of the DC Comics character Batman, as well as the co-architect of the series' development. In later years, Kane acknowledged Finger as "a contributing force" in the character's creation.[1] And several readers, such as comics historian Ron Goulart, have referred to Batman as the "creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger".[2] Still, despite a DC Comics press release in 2007 which states that "Kane, along with writer Bill Finger, had just created Batman for National Comics [DC's original name]",[3] DC has never officially credited Finger in comics or films as they have for Kane.
Finger additionally helped create Batman nemeses The Joker, The Penguin, Catwoman, Two-Face, The Riddler, and others. He also wrote many of the original 1940s Green Lantern stories and would go on to contribute to the development of numerous comic book series.
His name provided the basis for the Bill Finger Award, founded by Jerry Robinson and presented annually at Comic-Con International to honor lifetime achievements by comic book writers insufficiently honored for their work in the medium.[4]
Contents |
Biography
Early life and career
Bill Finger was born in 1914 to a Jewish-American family.[5] He joined Bob Kane's nascent studio in 1938. An aspiring writer and a part-time shoe salesman, he had met Kane at a party;[6] Kane later offered him a job ghost writing the strips Rusty and Clip Carson.[7][8]
Early the following year, National Comics' success with the seminal superhero Superman in Action Comics prompted editors to scramble for similar heroes. In response, Kane conceived "the Bat-Man". Finger recalled that Kane
| “ | had an idea for a character called 'Batman', and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN.[8] | ” |
Finger offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl instead of the domino mask, a cape instead of wings, adding gloves, and removing the red sections from the original costume.[6][9] He later said his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk's popular The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic strip character with which Kane was familiar as well,[10] and that he devised the name Bruce Wayne for the character's secret identity: "Bruce Wayne's first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock ... then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne."[1] As Kane summed up decades later in his autobiography, "Bill Finger was a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning... I made Batman a superhero-vigilante when I first created him. Bill turned him into a scientific detective.[11]
Finger wrote both the initial script for Batman's debut in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) and the character's second appearance, while Kane provided art.[6] Batman proved a breakout hit, and Finger went on to write many of the early Batman stories, including making major contributions to the character of the Joker, as well as other major Batman villains. When Kane wanted Robin's origin to parallel Batman's, Finger made Robin's parents circus performers murdered while performing their trapeze act.[12]
Bill Finger recalled that,
| “ | Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Douglas Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea".[8] | ” |
Comics historian Jim Steranko wrote in 1970 that Finger's slowness as a writer led Batman editor Whitney Ellsworth to suggest Kane replace him, a claim reflected in Joe Desris' description of Finger as "notoriously tardy."[6][13] During Finger's absence, Gardner Fox contributed scripts that introduced Batman's early "Bat-" arsenal (the utility belt, the Bat-Gyro/plane and the Batarang).[14][15] Upon his return, Finger created or co-created items such as the Batmobile and Batcave,[16] and is credited with providing the name "Gotham City".[13] Among the things that made his stories distinctive were a use of giant-sized props: enlarged pennies, sewing machines, or typewriters.[17][18]
Eventually, Finger left Kane's studio to work directly for DC Comics, where he supplied scripts for characters including Batman and Superman (introducing to the latter's mythos the character Lana Lang). He would eventually write for other companies as well, including Fawcett Comics, Quality Comics, and Marvel Comics' 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics.
The Joker
In 1994, Bob Kane gave Finger co-credit for creating Batman's archnemesis the Joker, despite claims on the character by writer Jerry Robinson:
| “ | Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. [...] Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker'. Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it, but he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card.[19] | ” |
Robinson, whose original Joker playing card was on public display in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007, and the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia from October 24, 2004 to August 28, 2005, has countered that he created the Joker to be Batman's larger-than-life nemesis when extra stories needed to be written quickly for Batman #1 and that he even received credit for the story in a college course.[20] Regarding the Conrad Veidt similarity, Robinson said:
| “ | In that first meeting when I showed them that sketch of the Joker, Bill said it reminded him of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs. That was the first mention of it...He can be credited and Bob himself, we all played a role in it. The concept was mine. Bill finished that first script from my outline of the persona and what should happen in the first story. He wrote the script of that, so he really was co-creator, and Bob and I did the visuals, so Bob was also. [21] | ” |
Green Lantern
In 1940, Finger collaborated with artist Martin Nodell to create the superhero Green Lantern in All-American Comics #16 (July 1942). Both writer and artist received a byline on the strip, with Nodell in the earliest issues using the pseudonym "Matt Dellon".
According to Nodell, Finger was brought in to write scripts after Nodell had already conceived the character.[22] Nodell's name appeared first, before Finger's, in the bylines on the stories that he drew, although when ghost artists such as Irwin Hasen were used, Finger's name appeared first so that the credits then read "by Bill Finger and Martin Nodell".
Film
As a screenwriter, Finger wrote or co-wrote the films Death Comes to Planet Aytin, The Green Slime, and Track of the Moon Beast, and contributed scripts to the TV series' Hawaiian Eye and 77 Sunset Strip.[6][23] He also wrote a two-part episode "The Clock King's Crazy Crimes / The Clock King Gets Crowned", airing October 12-13, 1966, in season two of the live-action Batman TV series.[6][24]
Credit
Artist Bob Kane negotiated a contract with National Comics, the future DC Comics, that signed away ownership of the character in exchange for, among other compensations, a mandatory byline on all Batman comics (and adaptations thereof). Finger's name, in contrast, does not appear as an official credit on Batman stories or films, even the comics he wrote in the 1940s and 1950s.
Finger received limited acknowledgment for his writing work in the 1960s; the letters page of Batman #169 (Feb. 1965), for example, features editor Julius Schwartz naming Finger as creator of The Riddler, one of Batman's recurring villains.
Additionally, Finger did receive credit for his work for National's sister company, All-American Publications, during that time. For example, the first Wildcat story, in Sensation Comics #1 (July 1942), has the byline "by Irwin Hasen and Bill Finger", and the first Green Lantern story (see above) is credited to "Mart Dellon and Bill Finger". National later absorbed All-American. National's practice in the 1950s made formal bylines rare in comics, with DC regularly granting credit in its comics only to Kane; to William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, under his pseudonym of Charles Moulton; and to Sheldon Mayer.
Awards
Finger, who died in 1974, was posthumously inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999. In his honor, Comic-Con International established in 2005 the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, which is given annually to "two writers who favored us with important, inspirational work that has somehow not quite received its rightful recognition."[25]
BILL FINGER
PROJECT PROPOSAL #1
THE DIRTY BEGINNINGS OF THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS SUPERHERO
THE STORY OF BILL FINGER
Reading Material:
THE DIRTY BEGINNINGS OF THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS SUPERHERO
THE STORY OF BILL FINGER
Reading Material:
Wikipedia
Noblemania
Dial B
Noblemania
Dial B
I intend to produce a documentary exploring the history of the creation of the comic-book superhero Batman, specifically the fact his true creator has never been acknowledged. Batman was created in 1939 by Bob Kane, although in reality was created by Bill Finger.
THE NARRATIVE:
The two were young friends who met at a party, who joined together to start working in comicbooks. Kane (born Kahn, but changed because of its Jewish connotations) was employed by (what would become) DC comics at the time, as a penciller. After hearing about how much the creators of Superman made in depression era America, Kane stated he was going to create the next superhero.
That weekend he developed a superhero called Birdman, who wore a red suit and flew with attached wings. He showed the drawings to his writing partner Finger, who wasn't impressed. Finger radically altered the designs, by making the costume grey and black, giving him a mask, gloves, and a cape calling him Batman. He then settled on the alias Bruce Wayne, and created various supporting characters to flesh the character out.
Kane took Finger's work back to DC, who loved it. He made no mention of Finger in his pitch, and sold the idea as solely his own creation. The way he saw it, Finger was a ghost writer hired by him and so deserved none of the credit.
Finger was too meek to stand up for himself, and eventually got cornered writing the Batman issues for years, creating the mythology which made his supposed partner rich, while he lived on the peanuts Kane paid him.
Kane eventually grew tired of drawing the strips too, and hired several other 'ghost' artists to do his work, until he was a glorified production manager. He still claimed publicly he was penciling, inking, and writing every issue DC printed.
This went on for many years. Eventually DC found out and hired Kane's crew to work for them directly, but by this point Kane could retire. He'd also arranged a very cushy contract with DC which meant he would always be printed as Batman's creators. The one time Finger attempted to stand up for himself, the much more confident Kane outright called him a liar, bringing up Finger's known drinking problems, and bullied him into submission.
Kane went on to become a very famous, and very rich man. Finger on the other hand died young, a penniless unknown alcoholic. It was only after he died that Kane acknowledged he perhaps should've given Finger more credit, but made no serious attempt to do so.
REASONING:
The reasoning behind making this film is for two reasons. The first is that Bill Finger is a highly enigmatic figure, despite being behind a global icon, very little is known about him. For instance there are only a few confirmed photos and one sound recording of him in existence. Its far more interesting for the film maker as well as the audience to be discovering things about the subject as the film is being made.
The second is to try and get some recognition for the work Finger produced. The attention the film could potentially bring could right some wrongs, such as getting the byline amended to credit Finger for his creation, and also a wider appreciation from the millions of fans of his work, most of who don't know he existed.
STYLE:
The film I want to create has much in common with an earlier film, directed by Alex Gibney called Gonzo profiling the live of Hunter S. Thompson. Both are about recently deceased American writers, providing a through overview of their entire lives. I would face some of the problems Gibney also faced, but in much more extreme ways.
For example, when Gibney couldn't source true material (such as events depicted in Thompson's autobiographical story Fear and Loathing) he would create elaborate reconstructions. Because there is so little actual photography of Finger, reconstruction would be a key part of the film I'd make. I would aim to dramatise key story points, such as the moment Finger first saw Kane's inital sketch.
Another technique Gibney used in the production of his documentary was narration; however this was no ordinary narration. By using Johnny Depp, a famous actor who not only knew the subject, but played him in a popular film adaptation, legitimised the film in the eyes of Thompson's supporters.
Unfortunately because Finger lived and worked many decades ago, few of his peers remain. However multiple options remain to use a narrator personally linked to the subject, such as famed comic-book writers who have followed in his shoes, ala Frank Miller or Denny O'Neil. There is also the possibility of one of the actors from the many Batman films, such as Christian Bale or the voice of animated productions like Kevin Conroy to provide the inner thoughts and feelings of Bill Finger. These actors would be well suited to the role, seeing as they've played Finger's most prized creation, and would also legitimise the documentary.
THE NARRATIVE:
The two were young friends who met at a party, who joined together to start working in comicbooks. Kane (born Kahn, but changed because of its Jewish connotations) was employed by (what would become) DC comics at the time, as a penciller. After hearing about how much the creators of Superman made in depression era America, Kane stated he was going to create the next superhero.
That weekend he developed a superhero called Birdman, who wore a red suit and flew with attached wings. He showed the drawings to his writing partner Finger, who wasn't impressed. Finger radically altered the designs, by making the costume grey and black, giving him a mask, gloves, and a cape calling him Batman. He then settled on the alias Bruce Wayne, and created various supporting characters to flesh the character out.
Kane took Finger's work back to DC, who loved it. He made no mention of Finger in his pitch, and sold the idea as solely his own creation. The way he saw it, Finger was a ghost writer hired by him and so deserved none of the credit.
Finger was too meek to stand up for himself, and eventually got cornered writing the Batman issues for years, creating the mythology which made his supposed partner rich, while he lived on the peanuts Kane paid him.
Kane eventually grew tired of drawing the strips too, and hired several other 'ghost' artists to do his work, until he was a glorified production manager. He still claimed publicly he was penciling, inking, and writing every issue DC printed.
This went on for many years. Eventually DC found out and hired Kane's crew to work for them directly, but by this point Kane could retire. He'd also arranged a very cushy contract with DC which meant he would always be printed as Batman's creators. The one time Finger attempted to stand up for himself, the much more confident Kane outright called him a liar, bringing up Finger's known drinking problems, and bullied him into submission.
Kane went on to become a very famous, and very rich man. Finger on the other hand died young, a penniless unknown alcoholic. It was only after he died that Kane acknowledged he perhaps should've given Finger more credit, but made no serious attempt to do so.
REASONING:
The reasoning behind making this film is for two reasons. The first is that Bill Finger is a highly enigmatic figure, despite being behind a global icon, very little is known about him. For instance there are only a few confirmed photos and one sound recording of him in existence. Its far more interesting for the film maker as well as the audience to be discovering things about the subject as the film is being made.
The second is to try and get some recognition for the work Finger produced. The attention the film could potentially bring could right some wrongs, such as getting the byline amended to credit Finger for his creation, and also a wider appreciation from the millions of fans of his work, most of who don't know he existed.
STYLE:
The film I want to create has much in common with an earlier film, directed by Alex Gibney called Gonzo profiling the live of Hunter S. Thompson. Both are about recently deceased American writers, providing a through overview of their entire lives. I would face some of the problems Gibney also faced, but in much more extreme ways.
For example, when Gibney couldn't source true material (such as events depicted in Thompson's autobiographical story Fear and Loathing) he would create elaborate reconstructions. Because there is so little actual photography of Finger, reconstruction would be a key part of the film I'd make. I would aim to dramatise key story points, such as the moment Finger first saw Kane's inital sketch.
Another technique Gibney used in the production of his documentary was narration; however this was no ordinary narration. By using Johnny Depp, a famous actor who not only knew the subject, but played him in a popular film adaptation, legitimised the film in the eyes of Thompson's supporters.
Unfortunately because Finger lived and worked many decades ago, few of his peers remain. However multiple options remain to use a narrator personally linked to the subject, such as famed comic-book writers who have followed in his shoes, ala Frank Miller or Denny O'Neil. There is also the possibility of one of the actors from the many Batman films, such as Christian Bale or the voice of animated productions like Kevin Conroy to provide the inner thoughts and feelings of Bill Finger. These actors would be well suited to the role, seeing as they've played Finger's most prized creation, and would also legitimise the documentary.
Jump Cuts in Breathless
The following are five explainations behind the famous jump cuts in Breathless, written by Richard Raskin.
Since its eruption onto the film scene in 1959, Godard's Breathless has given rise to a number of very different hypotheses as to what motivated the director's radical departure from the practices of continuity editing when making this film. In the present article, I will present the spectrum of explanations that have already been offered, without putting any one of them to the test. To my knowledge, no overview of this type has as yet been proposed in the literature on Breathless, each commentator having offered a single explanation of his or her own, without evoking alternate approaches to the issue.
Other commentators have seen in the jump cuts a cinematic expression of qualities embodied by the character played by Jean-Paul Belmondo: Michel Poiccard, alias Laszlo Kovacs, who has no pangs of conscience whatsoever when he kills a motorcycle policeman in cold blood or knocks a man unconscious in a public lavatory in order to supply himself with some needed cash.
Since its eruption onto the film scene in 1959, Godard's Breathless has given rise to a number of very different hypotheses as to what motivated the director's radical departure from the practices of continuity editing when making this film. In the present article, I will present the spectrum of explanations that have already been offered, without putting any one of them to the test. To my knowledge, no overview of this type has as yet been proposed in the literature on Breathless, each commentator having offered a single explanation of his or her own, without evoking alternate approaches to the issue.
Although the present article[1] contains no previously unpublished explanation, it nevertheless represents a departure from earlier treatments of Godard's now famous jump cuts, in the sense that it illustrates the susceptibility of a given innovation to radically different explanatory options. Since this film remains a landmark in the history of world cinema, and is routinely studied as one of the major representatives of la nouvelle vague, the present article may be of some use to students of film history and of current trends in editing, as well as to those interested in the styles of explanation applied to problems of film esthetics.
1
I know the story behind Breathless and I can tell you it's a corker! A minor producer had hired a minor director to make a minor crime movie running a maximum of 5,000 meters. But the director filmed 8,000 meters; the producer told him to cut it down, but the director refused. Then he was forced to do so. So in an act of bravado, he made the cuts himself any which way, at random, in order to make the film unmarketable.. But curiously enough, once the bits of film were mounted, the producer considered the result to be ingenious, edited with power, astounding... He had wanted to demonstrate the impossibility of cutting his film, but what he did turned out to work. Then Godard understood... and in his subsequent films, he produced more Godard! Senseless ellipses, cuts in the middle of a tracking shot, were taken to be part of a new esthetic. It became a fashion. And France is the country of snobbism in the cinema - a country which gets caught up in everything and especially no matter what![3]
2
...in order to save a film not worth showing (Breathless), Godard chopped it up any which way, counting on the critics' susceptibility to being astounded, and they didn't let him down in helping him to launch a new fashion, that of the badly made film. Incorrigible waster of film, author of idiotic and abject comments on torture and denunciation, a self-promoter, Godard represents the most painful regression of French cinema towards intellectual illiteracy and plastic bluff.[4]
3
...first films are always very long. Since after thirty years [of living], people try to put everything into their first film. So they're always very long. And I was no exception to the rule. I had made a film that lasted two and a quarter or two and a half hours; and it was impossible, the contract specified that the running time not exceed an hour and a half. And I remember very clearly... how I invented this famous way of cutting, that is now used in commercials: we took all the shots and systematically cut out whatever could be cut, while trying to maintain some rhythm. For example, Belmondo and Seberg had a sequence in a car at a certain moment; and there was a shot of one, then a shot of the other, as they spoke their lines. And when we came to this sequence, which had to be shortened like the others, instead of slightly shortening both, the editor and I flipped a coin; we said: 'Instead of slightly shortening one and then slightly shortening the other, and winding up with short little shots of both of them, we're going to cut out four minutes by eliminating one or the other altogether, and then we will simply join the [remaining] shots, like that, as though it were a single shot. Then we drew lots as to whether it should be Belmondo or Seberg and Seberg remained...[5]
The scene described here may be the one in which Belmondo's off-screen lines are:
Alas! Alas! Alas! I love a girl who has a very pretty neck, very pretty breasts, a very pretty voice, very pretty wrists, a very pretty forehead, very pretty knees... but who is a coward.
As these lines are heard, we see a series of shots of Seberg in the passenger seat of the stolen convertible Belmondo is driving through the street of Paris. Discontinuities from one shot to the next with respect to (a) the position of the actress's head, (b) the degree of direct sunlight or shade, and (c) the streets and parked or moving cars seen in the background, make this one of the best examples in the film of Godard's jump cuts, seven of which turn up here in rapid succession.
|  Alas! Alas! Alas! I love a girl who has a very pretty neck...
| |
 ...very pretty breasts...
|  ...a very pretty voice... | |
 ...very pretty wrists...
|  ...a very pretty forehead... | |
 ...very pretty knees...
|  ...but who is a coward. |
4
 The barrel of Michel's revolver as he aims and fires at the gendarme.
|  The gendarme falling as the next shot begins.
|
Viewed in this perspective, the ellipses are meaningful in the sense that they are expressive of the behaviors enacted in the film. Hence the way in which the film is edited, and the conduct depicted in the film, are seen as structurally homologous.
For example, Luc Mollet wrote: "Because the conduct of the characters reflects a series of moral jump cuts, the film will be a series of jump cuts."[6] And according to Bosley Crowther, the "disconnected cutting" of the film - a "pictorial cacophony" - is appropriate for a film in which "there is subtly conveyed a vastly complex comprehension of an element of youth that is vagrant, disjointed, animalistic and doesn't give a damn for anybody or anything, not even itself."[7]
A more elaborate attempt to decode the significance of the jump cuts, can be found in Annie Goldmann's discussion of the film. According to Goldmann, Godard does not use elliptical editing in scenes depicting relations between persons. In these scenes, involving Belmondo and Jean Seberg in their roles as Michel and Patricia, she suggests that the relations are fully (i.e. not elliptically) described because of their primordial importance. It is in scenes depicting the social world - such as the killing of the gendarme - that the filmic representation becomes elliptical, "the editing telescoped, with 'holes' between the shots," because in Michel's eyes, incidents involving the representatives of social authority are unimportant:
The action is shortened, not for the purpose of giving the impression of rapidity, but because the event itself is of no interest to the hero... For him, and for the viewer who sees the world through Michel's mind... everything about these events is of no interest to the degree that everything related to society is of no concern to him. This is why the director represents it almost carelessly and even unintelligibly at times.[8]
Unfortunately, Goldmann does not attempt to demonstrate the validity of her claim by showing systematically that elliptical and non-elliptical editing are used in scenes depicting what she views as social and personal relations, respectively. The convertible scene cited above - to name only one example of a scene combining personal relations with jump cuts - would be difficult to account for in the context of Goldmann's model.
5
For an anonymous reviewer in Time, Godard brought cubism into the language of film:
More daringly cubistic is the manner in which Godard has assembled his footage. Every minute or so, sometimes every few seconds, he has chopped a few feet out of the film, patched it together again without transition. The story can still be followed, but at each cut the film jerks ahead with a syncopated impatience that aptly suggests and stresses the compulsive pace of the hero's downward drive. More subtly, the trick also distorts, rearranges, relativizes time - much as Picasso manipulated space in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. All meaningful continuity is bewildered...[9]
For Arlene Croce, Godard's editing is analogous to jazz, and is part of an esthetic which shifts the focus of interest from meaning to the cinematic medium itself:
Breathless is a mannerist fantasy, cinematic jazz. Watching it, one can hardly avoid the feeling that Godard's intention, above all, was to produce slices of cinema - shots, figments, iconography - what the Cahiers critics talk about. His reality is always cinematized; the camera is always "there," as it were, with its short jabs or long looping rambles of celluloid. There are few dissolves and almost no smooth cuts; and the cuts are often so fast that for moments at a time the spectator is thoroughly dislocated. For example, the arrival of Belmondo in Paris is shown thus: a long shot of the city/a car pulling up/Belmondo entering a phone booth, making a call, getting no answer, leaving/Belmondo somewhere buying a paper/Belmondo on the doorstep of a pension, with some dialogue/Belmondo inside at the concierge's desk and stealing a key/Belmondo emerging, toweling, from the bathroom of the apartment. The whole truncated sequence lasts considerably less than a minute; there are no transitions, no "continuity." Often there are cuts made within the same shot. No attempt is made, either through cutting or through the long drunken pans, at academic-style montage, composition, or meaning of any sort. It is merely movie business...[10]
Penelope Houston also characterizes Godard's esthetic as one shifting the focus from story or narrative to a more instantaneous experience, grounded in the very language of the cinematic medium:
...the film is edited so that the traditional time sequence is broken, with jump cuts (by which we may see the beginning and the end of an action, but not the bit in the middle), with repeated shifts of place and viewpoint... [such gambits] are not merely stylistic fancy-work. They underline an attitude to film-making. If the director's basic concern is to tell a story to a large audience, he will help the spectator to follow it easily: if a character tells us that he is going to do something, and there is then a cut, we are conditioned to expect that in the next scene he will be doing the thing he talked about. But if the film-maker is concerned not so much with a story as with the immediate instant, with the involvement of the audience less in a narrative than a sensation or an experience, with the kind of chances and hazards that intervene in life, then these wires of convention can be cut and left dangling. The film finds and imposes its own logic.What we see is what the director chooses to show us: if he finds something boring and decides to skip over it, with an implied 'etc., etc.', then he assumes that we know enough about cinema conventions to keep up with him. In Breathless, certainly, the characters themselves have no existence outside the context in which Godard evokes them... The film itself is the thing; and the audience finds at least part of its pleasure in a sharing of the director's own excitement, the sense of glee he transparently feels at the improvised moment that sets the screen alight, the experiments with timing, the investigation of a language.[11]
Godard's violation of the most basic rules of continuity editing would be seen in this context as a breakthrough to a new conception of cinematic art. This would be a constructive characterization of what might otherwise be seen in more destructive terms.
The view Godard himself expressed, at least on one occasion, was far less positive. When asked by Gordon Gow exactly what he had in mind when making Breathless, Godard replied
that he doesn't hold with rules and he was out to destroy accepted conventions of film-making. Hiroshima, mon amour, he said, was the start of something new, and Breathless was the end of something old. He made it on real locations and in real rooms, having no truck with studios (although more recently he has worked in a studio and found it advantageous). He employed a hand-camera, because he is impatient and when he is ready to shoot he doesn't like waiting about for complicated camera set-ups. And having finished the shooting, he chopped it about as a manifestation of filmic anarchy, technical iconoclasm.[12]
More recently, Agnès Guillemot, who edited or co-edited most of Godard's films during the 1960s, made the following statement about what she saw as the underlying reason for Godard's innovative style of editing:
Godard is not a specialist of the jump cut, he is a specialist of the true respiration of the cinema, which is not at all the same thing. And the so-called correct way of cutting has for a long time been a hindrance to the true respiration of the cinema. Godard is the specialist of audacity and freedom. He did not edit his films against the rest of the cinema but rather for what he thought they ought to be.[13]
Summary and Conclusions
The elliptical editing of Breathless has been explained, in the literature on the film, as being motivated by: 1) a deliberate attempt on Godard's part to ruin the film in order to get even with a producer who had insisted that the film be shortened despite Godard's protests (Autant-Lara); 2) a devious attempt on Godard's part to save a third-rate film by mutilating it in a way French film critics would perceive as astounding (Benayoun); 3) a need to shorten a film that was too long, and a wish to do so in a new way (Godard); 4) a desire to express cinematically the moral and emotional disjointedness of the behaviors portrayed (Moullet, Crowther), or to depict the social world as meaningless in the eyes of Michel Poiccard (Goldmann); 5) the director's quest for a new esthetic - a cinematic equivalent of cubism or jazz - shifting the focus of interest from story or meaning to the film medium itself (Time, Croce, Houston), or by the director's all-out attack on an outmoded cinematic discourse (Godard) or attempt to allow his film to breathe freely (Guillemot).The "inside dopester" explanations (1 and 2 above) are the most amusing and have the same appeal as a juicy bit of gossip which casts a celebrity in an unflattering light. They are also as reliable as gossip, and probably tell more about the personal tastes and aversions of the critic than about the defamed subject.
Godard's own account of the jump cuts in relation to the postproduction process (3) clearly deserves a higher status, particularly since it is neither self-promoting nor designed to discredit anyone else. That does not mean, however, that it should be taken entirely at face value as the last word on the jump cuts, even if it is a full and accurate account as to how they came about, since it tells us nothing about the way in which the jump cuts work within the film.
The approaches which focus on that are the only ones which enrich our understanding of Breathless. In this context, the transmission of anecdotal material becomes secondary, and the primary concern is on discovering the expressive properties of the jump cut, either in relation to the particular story told by the film (4) or as the cornerstone of a new esthetic (5). Here, the meaning and function of the jump cuts are given full attention, rather than factors which have no relation to the viewer's experience of the film.
This does not mean that certain explanations should be discarded in favor of others. Even explanations which are vicious or misleading are worth knowing and discussing - both because they help to heighten our appreciation of more illuminating approaches, and because it is a value in itself to contemplate as broad a spectrum of explanatory options as possible when dealing with any innovation.
Works cited
Autant-Lara, Claude. "La nouvelle vague: un préjudice énorme," in La nouvelle vague 25 ans après, edited by Jean-Luc Douin. Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 1983; pp. 203-207.Benayoun, Robert. "Breathless," Positif 46 (June 1962), p. 27.
Croce, Arlene. "Breathless," Film Quarterly (Spring 1961), pp. 54-56.
Crowther, Bosley. "Breathless," The New York Times (February 8, 1961).
Durand, Philippe. Cinéma et montage - un art de l'éllipse. Paris: Cerf, 1993.
Godard, Jean-Luc. Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma. Paris: Albatros, 1980.
Goldmann, Annie. Cinéma et société moderne. Paris: Denoël/Gonthier, 1971/1974.
Gow, Gordon. "Breathless," Films and Filming (August 1961), p. 25.
Houston, Penelope. The Contemporary Cinema. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969; orig. pub. 1963.
Moullet, Luc. "Jean-Luc Godard," Cahiers du cinéma (April 1960), pp. 25-36.
Unsigned. "Cubistic Crime," Time (February 17, 1961), p. 56.
KENNETH ANGER
The following article is from wikipedia, concerning the work of Kenneth Anger.
Kenneth Anger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemeyer February 3, 1927) is an American underground avant-garde film-maker and author. His short films, which he has been producing since 1937, have variously merged surrealism with homoerotica and the occult. Whilst he has produced almost forty short films in his lifetime, only six of these have received distribution, and have come to be referred to as the "Magick Lantern Cycle".[1] He has been described as "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers, and certainly the first whose work addressed homosexuality in an undisguised, self-implicating manner",[2] and some of his homoerotic works, such as Fireworks (1947) and Scorpio Rising (1964), were produced prior to the legalisation of homosexuality in the United States.
He has focused upon occult themes in many his films, being fascinated by the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley and following Crowley's religion of Thelema. This influence is evident from films like Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972). During the 1960s and 70s he associated and worked with a number of different figures in popular culture and the occult, including Anton Szandor LaVey, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page. Anger has described film makers such as Auguste and Louis Lumière and Georges Méliès as influences[3] and has been cited as an important influence on later film directors like Martin Scorsese, David Lynch[4] and John Waters.[5] He is also the author of the controversial best seller Hollywood Babylon and its sequel Hollywood Babylon II, in which he exposed many of the rumours and secrets of Hollywood celebrities.
Biography
Early Life (1927-1935)
Kenneth Anger was born in Santa Monica, California, as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer on February 3, 1927. His father, Wilbur Anglemyer, had been born in Troy, Ohio, but claimed German ancestry, whilst his mother, Lillian Coler, who was the older of the two, was a cripple who claimed English ancestry. The pair had met at Ohio State College and after marrying had their first child, Jean Anglemyer, in 1918, followed by a second, Robert "Bob" Anglemyer, in 1921. That year they moved to Santa Monica in order to be near Lillian's mother, Bertha Coler, who herself had recently moved there. It was here that Wilbur got a job working as an electrical engineer at Douglas Aircraft, bringing in enough money so that they could live comfortably as a middle class family.[6]
Kenneth, their third and final child, was born in 1927, but growing up he would fail to get along with either his parents or his siblings. His brother Bob later claimed that being the youngest child, Kenneth had been spoilt by his mother and grandmother, and as such had become somewhat "bratty". His grandmother, Bertha, was a big influence on the young Kenneth, and indeed helped to maintain the family financially during the Great Depression of the 1920s. It was she who first took Kenneth to the cinema, to see a double bill of The Singing Fool and Thunder Over Mexico and also encouraged his artistic interests. She herself later moved into a house in Hollywood with another woman, Miss Diggy, who equally encouraged Kenneth.[7] He developed an early interest in film, and enjoyed reading the movie tie-in Big Little books. He would later relate that "I was a child prodigy who never got smarter."[8] He would later relate that he attended the Santa Monica Cotillon where child stars were encouraged to mix with ordinary children and through this met Shirley Temple, whom he danced with on one occasion.[9]
It was in 1935, he would later claim, that he actually had the chance to appear in a Hollywood film - as the Changeling Prince in the 1935 Warner Bros. film A Midsummer Night's Dream by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, a film that certainly influenced him, particularly in his later production of Rabbit's Moon. Set photographs and studio production reports (on file in the Warner Bros. Collection, USC, and the Warner Bros. collection of studio key books at George Eastman House, Rochester NY) in fact contradict Anger's claims, stating that that the character was played by a girl named Sheila Brown. Reports have subsequently emerged that have been attributed to the actor Mickey Rooney, who played the character of Puck in the film, claiming that Sheila Brown was in fact Anger dressed up as a girl by his mother.[10] Rooney supposedly had befriended Anglemyer on set, and Anger himself would later fondly remark of him in his book Hollywood Babylon II, describing him as "Puck Forever".[11] Anger's unofficial biographer, Bill Landis, remarked in 1995 that the Changeling Prince was definitely "Anger as a child; visually, he's immediately recognisable".[12]
First Films (1937-1946)
Anger's first film was created in 1937, when he was only ten years old. The short, entitled Ferdinand the Bull, had been shot on the ends of 16mm film that had been left unused after the Anglemyer's family vacation to Yosemite National Park, where they had been making home movies with it. In the Ferdinand the Bull, which has never been made publicly available, Kenneth himself wore a cape (presumably as a matador), whilst two of his friends from the Boy Scouts played the bull.[13] His second work, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat, which Anger himself often considers to be his first proper film, comprised of footage of children playing during the summer, accompanied with popular songs by bands like the Ink Spots. Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat had been created in 1941, when he was fourteen, shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the subsequent entering of the United States into the Second World War, adding to the poignancy of this early work.[14] The following year he produced another amateur film, Prisoner of Mars, which was heavily influenced by Flash Gordon, a series that he was a fan of. In this science fiction-inspired feature, he added elements taken from the Greek mythological myth of the Minotaur and himself played the protagonist, as well as constructed a small volcano in his back yard to create a form of home-made special effect.[14] It is believed that many of these early films are lost, with Anger burning much of his previous work in 1967.[10]
"I've always considered movies evil; the day that cinema was invented was a black day for mankind."
Kenneth Anger[15]
In 1944, the Anglemyers moved to Hollywood to live with their grandmother, and Kenneth began attending Beverly Hills High School. It was here that he met Maxine Peterson, who had once been the stand-in for Shirley Temple, and he asked her, alongside another classmate and an old woman, to appear in his next film project, which he initially called Demigods but which was later retitled Escape Episode. Revolving partially around the occult, it was filmed in a "spooky old castle" in Hollywood and was subsequently screened at the Coronet Theater on North La Cinega, Los Angeles. Around this time Anger also began attending the screenings of silent films held at Clara Grossman's art gallery, through which he met a fellow film-maker, Curtis Harrington, and together they formed Creative Film Associates, whose purpose it was to distribute underground films such as those of Maya Deren.[16]
It was whilst at high school that he began to get interested in the occult, which he had first indirectly encountered through reading Frank L. Baum's Oz books as a child, with their accompanying Rosicrucian philosophies. Kenneth was very interested in the works of the French ceremonial magician Eliphas Levi, as well as Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough,[17] although his favourite was the writings of the British occultist Aleister Crowley Crowley had founded a religion known as Thelema based upon a religious experience that he had in 1904, in which a being known as Aiwass had contacted him and recited to him The Book of the Law. Kenneth subsequently became a great fan of Crowley's work and converted to Thelema.[18]
Fireworks and Early Career (1947-1949)
As Anger discovered his homosexuality, at a time when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United States, he began associating with the underground gay scene. At some point in the mid 1940s, he was arrested by the police in a "homosexual entrapment", after which he decided to move out of his parents home, gaining his own sparse apartment largely financed by his grandmother,[19] and abandoning the name Anglemyer in favour of Anger.[20] He started attending the University of Southern California, where he studied cinema, and also began experimenting with the use of mind-altering drugs like cannabis and peyote.[21] It was then that he decided to produce a film that would deal with his sexuality, just as other gay avant-garde film makers like Willard Maas were doing in that decade. The result was the short film Fireworks, which was created in 1947 but only exhibited publicly in 1948. Upon release of the work, Anger made the claim to have been seventeen years old when he made it, despite the fact that he was actually twenty, presumably to present himself as more of an enfant terrible.[22] A homoerotic work lasting only 14 minutes, Fireworks revolves around a young man (played by Anger himself) associating with various navy officers, who eventually turn on him, stripping him naked and beating him to death, ripping open his chest to find a clock ticking inside. Several fireworks then explode, accompanied by a burning Christmas tree and the final shot shows the young man lying in bed next to another topless man. Of this film, Anger would later state in 1966 that "This flick is all I have to say about being 17, the United States Navy, American Christmas and the fourth of July."[23] He would continuously alter and adapt the film up until 1980, with it finally being distributed on VHS in 1986.[24]
One of the first people to buy a copy of Fireworks was the sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research. He and Anger struck up a friendship that would last until the doctor's death, during which time Anger aided Kinsey in his research. According to Anger's unofficial biographer Bill Landis, Kinsey became a "father figure" whom Anger "could both interact with and emulate."[25] Meanwhile, in 1949 Anger began work on a film known as Puce Moment, which unlike Fireworks was filmed in colour. It starred Yvonne Marquis as a glamorous woman going about her daily life; Anger would later state that "Puce Women was my love affair with Hollywood... with all the great goddesses of the silent screen. They were to be filmed in their homes; I was, in effect, filming ghosts."[26] A lack of funding meant that only one scene was ever produced. That same year, Anger directed The Love That Whirls, a film based upon Aztec human sacrifice, but because of the nudity that it contained was destroyed by technicians at the film lab who deemed it to be obscene.[27]
France, Rabbit's Moon and Eaux d'Artifice (1950-1953)
In 1950 Anger moved to Paris, France, where he initially stayed with friends of his (who themselves had been forced to leave Hollywood after being blacklisted for formerly having belonged to trade union organisations).[28] He would later remark that he travelled to the country after receiving a letter from the French director Jean Cocteau in which he told Anger of his admiration for Fireworks. Upon arrival, Anger and Cocteau became friends, with the Frenchman giving the young protege his permission to make a movie of his ballet The Young Man and Death, although at the time there were no financial backers for the project.[29] It was whilst in Paris that he continued producing short films; in 1950 he started filming on Rabbit's Moon, which was also known as La Lune des Lapins and revolved around a clown who was staring up at the moon, in which a rabbit lived, something found within Japanese mythology. Anger produced 20 minutes of footage at the Films du Pantheon Studio in the city before he was rushed out of the studio, leaving the film uncompleted. He stored the footage in the disorganised archives of the Cinémathèque Française, and only collected it again in 1970, when he finally finished and released Rabbit's Moon.[30][31] It was at the Cinémathèque Française that he befriended the head, Henri Langlois (later claiming that he worked for Langlois for twelve years[28]) and was allowed to rummage through the Cinémathèque's archives, in which he found prints of Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, which he attempted to put into Eisenstein's original order.[32]
"[D'Este was] a sexual pervert. There are very few things I call sexual perversion, but he liked to fuck goats, and that is technically a perversion."
Kenneth Anger[33]
In 1953, he travelled to Rome, Italy where he planned to make a film about the sixteenth century occultist Cardinal d'Este. To do so, he began filming at the garden of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, in which a lady in eighteenth century dress walked through the gardens, which featured many waterfalls (an allusion to the fact that d'Este allegedly sexually enjoyed urination),[34] accompanied by the music of Vivaldi.[35] This was supposedly going to be only the first of four scenes, but the others were not made; the resulting one-scene film was entitled Eaux d'Artifice. As Anger's biographer Bill Landis remarked, "It's one of Anger's most tranquil works; his editing makes it soft, lush, and inviting. Eaux d'Artifice remains a secretive romp through a private garden, all for the masked figure's and the viewer-voyeur's pleasure."[36]
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Hollywood Babylon (1953-1960)
Alfred Kinsey (left) and Anger at the Abbey of Thelema in 1955, with an image of Crowley on the wall.
In 1953, soon after the production of Eaux d'Artifice, Anger's mother died and he temporarily returned to the United States in order to take part in the distribution of her will. In was during this return that he began to once more immerse himself in the artistic scene of California, befriending the film maker Stan Brakhage, who had been inspired by Fireworks, and the two collaborated on producing a film, but it was confiscated at the film lab for obscenity and presumably destroyed.[37] Around this time, two of Anger's friends, the couple Renate Druks and Paul Mathiesin held a party based upon the theme of 'Come As Your Madness'; Anger himself attended dressed in drag as the ancient Greek goddess Hekate. The party and its many costumes inspired Anger, who produced a painting of it, and asked several of those who attended to appear in a new film that he was creating - Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.[38] Inauguration, which was created in 1954, was a 38 minute surrealist work featuring many Crowleyan and Thelemite themes, with many of the various different characters personifying various pagan gods such as Isis, Osiris and Pan. One of the actresses in the film was Marjorie Cameron, the widow of Jack Parsons, the influential American Thelemite who had died a few years previously, whilst Anger himself played Hecate.[39] He would subsequently exhibit the film at various European film festivals, winning the Prix du Ciné-Club Belge and the Prix de l'Age d'Or as well as screening it in the form of a projected triptych at Expo 58, the World Fair held in Brussels in 1958.[40]
In 1955, Anger and his friend Alfred Kinsey travelled to the derelict Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily in order to film a short documentary entitled Thelema Abbey. The abbey itself had been used by Aleister Crowley for his commune during the 1920s, and Anger restored many of the erotic wallpaintings that were found there as well as performing certain Crowleyan rituals at the site. The documentary was made for the British television series Omnibus, who later lost it.[18][41] The following year Kinsey died, and Anger decided to return to Paris, and was described at this time as being "extremely remote and lonely".[42]
In desperate need of money, Anger wrote a book titled Hollywood Babylon in which he revealed much of the elicit gossip regarding celebrities that he had been told. This included claiming that Rudolph Valentino liked to play a sexually submissive role to dominant women, as well as describing the nature of the deaths of Peg Entwistle and Lupe Velez. The work was initially not published in the United States, instead the publisher was the French Jean Jacques Pauvert.[43] A pirated (and incomplete) version was first published in the U.S. in 1965, with the official American version not being published until 1974. Now with some financial backing from the publication of Hollywood Babylon, his next film project was The Story of O; essentially a piece of erotica featuring a heterosexual couple engaged in sado-masochistic sexual activities, although it refrained from showing any explicit sexual images.[44]
Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1961-1965)
In 1961, Anger once more returned to America, where he lived for a time with Marjorie Cameron.[45] Meanwhile he began work on a new feature, a film about the emerging biker subculture, which he titled Scorpio Rising. For this, he employed a biker named Richard McAuley, and filmed him and some of his friends messing around, adding to it scenes of McAuley, or "Scorpio" as he became known, desecrating a derelict church. Anger incorporated more controversial visuals into the piece, including Nazi iconography, nudity, and clips of the life of Jesus Christ taken from Family Films' The Road to Jerusalem. In Scorpio Rising, Anger intercuts images of Christ from the cheap religious film with those of Scorpio, both of whom are rebels in their own way. The whole film has a soundtrack made up of popular 1950s songs, including "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, "Torture" by Kris Jensen and "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March.[46] Anger himself described the film as "a death mirror held up to American culture... Thanatos in chrome, black leather, and bursting jeans."[47] It immediately became popular on the underground cinema scene although was soon brought to court with complaints claiming that it was obscene. The all-female jury ruled in favour of the prosecutors, and Scorpio Rising was banned, although this ban was subsequently overturned on appeal to the California State Supreme Court.[48]
With Scorpio Rising finished and Anger now living in San Francisco, he went to the Ford Foundation, who had just started a program of giving out grants to filmmakers. He showed them his ideas for a new artistic short, entitled Kustom Kar Kommandos, which they approved of, and gave him a grant of $10,000.[49] However, Anger spent much of the money on living expenses and making alterations to some of his earlier films, meaning that by the time he actually created Kustom Kar Kommandos, it was only one scene long. This homoerotic film involved various shots of a young man polishing a drag strip racing car, accompanied with a pink background and the song "Dream Lover" by The Paris Sisters. Soon after, Anger struck a deal that allowed Hollywood Babylon to be officially published in the United States for the first time, where it proved a success, selling two million copies during the 1960s, and around the same time Anger also translated Lo Duca's History of Eroticism into English for American publication.[50]
The Hippie Movement and Invocation of My Demon Brother (1966-1969)
The mid 1960s saw the arrival of the hippie scene and the increasing use of the mind-altering drugs that Anger himself had been using for many years. In particular, the hallucinogen LSD, which at the time was still legal in the United States, was very popular, and in 1966 Anger released a version of his earlier film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome entitled the "Sacred Mushroom Edition" which was screened to people whilst taking LSD, thereby heightening their sensory experience.[51] By this time, Anger had become well known throughout the underground scene in the United States, and several cinemas across the country screened his better known films all in one event.[52] With this growing fame, Anger began to react to publicity in much the same way as his idol Aleister Crowley had done, for instance describing himself as "the most monstrous moviemaker in the underground", a pun on the fact that Crowley had been labelled "the wickedest man in the world" by the British tabloids in the 1920s.[53] Anger's fame on the underground circuit allowed him to increasingly associate with other celebrities, including Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan; despite their differing philosophies, the two became good friends and would remain so for many years. However, Anger also held a resentment towards certain celebrities, namely Andy Warhol, who at the time was achieving success not only in the art world but also in the underground film scene.[54] In 1980 Anger would even throw paint over the front door of a house that Warhol had only recently moved out of.[55]
In 1966, Anger moved into the ground floor of a large 19th century house in San Francisco known as the Russian Embassy.[56] Around this time he began planning for a new film, which he planned to title Lucifer Rising and which would echo his Thelemic beliefs about the ensuing Aeon of Horus. He had the name of Lucifer tattooed upon his chest and began searching for a young man who could symbolically become Lucifer, "the Crowned and Conquering Child" of the new Aeon, for Lucifer Rising. He met various young men who could fit the position, inviting each to live with him at the Russian Embassy, although eventually he settled upon a man named Bobby Beausoleil.[57] Beausoleil also formed a band, the Magic Powerhouse of Oz, in order to record the music for the film.[58] Then, in 1967, Anger claimed that the footage which he had been filming for Lucifer Rising had been stolen, and he placed the blame upon Beausoleil, who would deny the claims, later telling Anger's unofficial biographer Bill Landis that "what had happened was that Kenneth had spent all the money that was invested in Lucifer Rising" and that he therefore invented the story to satisfy the film's creditors.[59] Beausoleil and Anger fell out, with the former getting involved with Charles Manson and his cult, the Family, eventually carrying out Manson's bidding by torturing and murdering Gary Hinman.
Anger subsequently decided to publicly reinvent himself. In the October 26, 1967 issue of Village Voice he placed a full-page advert declaring "In Memoriam. Kenneth Anger. Filmmaker 1947-1967". He soon publicly reappeared, this time to claim that he had burned all of his early work.[60] The following year he travelled to London where he first met J. Paul Getty, who would subsequently become Anger's patron, and where he also met and befriended Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, members of The Rolling Stones,[61] as well as Richards' drug addicted girlfriend Anita Pallenberg.[62] Anger then decided to use much of the footage created for Lucifer Rising in a new film of his, Invocation of My Demon Brother, which starred Beausoleil, LaVey, Jagger and Richards, as well as Anger himself, and the music for which had been composed by Jagger. It was released in 1969, and explored many of the Thelemic themes that Anger had originally intended for Lucifer Rising.[63]
Lucifer Rising (1970-1981)
With Invocation of My Demon Brother having used up much of the footage originally intended for Lucifer Rising, Anger once more set about to create this film, which was designed to be a symbolic analogy of the coming Aeon of Horus as prophesied in the Thelemic sacred text, The Book of the Law. Anger managed to get the actress Marianne Faithfull to appear in it, and tried to convince his friend Mick Jagger to play the part of Lucifer in the film, although he refused, and instead offered his brother Chris for the part, something Anger accepted, but was not happy about.[64] Anger subsequently filmed eight minutes of the film, and showed them to the British National Film Finance Corporation who agreed to provide £15,000 in order for Anger to complete it - something that caused a level of outrage in the British press. With this money, he could afford to fly the cast and crew to both Germany and Egypt for filming.[65] Anger befriended Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page around this time, with the two having a great mutual interest in Crowley. At Page's invitation, Anger would travel to Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland, where Crowley had once lived and which Page had purchased, and helped the musician to exorcise the building of what Page believed to be a headless man's ghost.[66] Page subsequently agreed to produce the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising,[67][68] and allowed to use the editing table which was in the basement of his London home to alter the music which he produced.[69] Anger later fell out with Page's wife Charlotte, who kicked him out of the house. In retaliation, he called a press conference in which he ridiculed Page and threatened to "throw a Kenneth Anger curse" on him.[70] Page's music was dumped from the film and replaced in 1979 by music written and recorded by Bobby Beausoleil, with whom Anger had made up — the only movie soundtrack in history recorded inside a prison.[71]
"[Lucifer is] a teenage rebel. Lucifer must be played by a teenage boy. It's type-casting. I'm a pagan and the film is a real invocation of Lucifer. I'm much realer than von Stroheim. The film contained real black magicians, a real ceremony, real altars, real human blood, and a real magic circle consecrated with blood and cum."
Kenneth Anger[72]
Meanwhile, Anger, who moved to an apartment in New York City, went and took the footage that he had filmed for Rabbit's Moon in the 1950s, finally releasing the film in 1972, and again in a shorter version in 1979. Around the same time he also added a new soundtrack to Puce Moment and re-released it.[73] It was also around this time that the publisher Marvin Miller produced a low budget documentary film based on Hollywood Babylon without Anger's permission, greatly angering him and leading him to sue.[74] He also created a short film entitled Senators in Bondage which was only available to private collectors and which has never been made publicly available, and had plans to make a film about Aleister Crowley entitled The Wickedest Man in the World, but this project never got off the ground.[75] In 1980, he went and holidayed with his friend, the playwright Tennessee Williams.[76]
It was in 1981, a decade after starting the project, that he finally finished and released the 30-minute long Lucifer Rising. Based upon the Thelemite concept that mankind had entered a new period known as the Aeon of Horus, Lucifer Rising was full of occult symbolism, starring Miriam Gibril as the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis and Donald Cammell as her consort Osiris, as well as Marianne Faithfull as the Biblical figure of Lilith and Leslie Huggins as Lucifer himself. Anger once again appeared in the film himself, starring as the Magus, the same role that he played in Invocation to My Demon Brother.[77] He had surrealistically combined the roles that these characters played with footage of volcanoes, various ancient Egyptian temples and a Crowleyan adept reading from the man's texts.
Retirement (1982-1999)
Soon after the release of Lucifer Rising, a PBS documentary of Anger and his films was made, entitled Kenneth Anger's Magick, which was directed by Kit Fitzgerald, who later recalled interviewing him in his New York flat on a very hot July evening, during which Anger revealed that he was so broke that he had been forced to sell his air conditioner.[78] Anger himself considered producing other films that would continue on from Lucifer Rising in a series, and he began referring to his finished film as "Part I: Sign Language", to be followed by two further parts.[79] Nonetheless, these projects would never be finished, and Anger himself would not produce any further films for nearly two decades. In need of money, Anger subsequently released Hollywood Babylon II in 1982, as well as continuing to screen his films at various festivals and at universities; around this time he began wearing an eyepatch to these public events, something likely due to him having been beaten up and getting a bruised eye, a story that he would bring up in various interviews, although partly changing who it was who had beaten him up in various versions of the story.[80] In 1984, a notorious incident occurred when Anger was invited to appear on The Coca Crystal Show, however upon arriving at the studio he demanded that somebody pay for his taxi ride there, and when they refused, he attacked the talent coordinator Maurice Ivice and tried to drag her into his taxi, before she was rescued by other members of staff - Anger reportedly escaped the scene by flinging a $100 bill at the cab-driver and screaming "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"[81]
In 1986, he sold the video rights to his films, which finally appeared on VHS, allowing them to have greater publicity. The following year he attended the Avignon Film Festival in France where his work was being celebrated in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of Fireworks. Soon after this, a BBC documentary about Anger was made, directed by Nigel Finch for the Arena series, in which Anger himself was interviewed. In 1991, Anger moved to West Arenas Boulevard in Palm Springs, where the British Film Institute sent Rebecca Wood to assist him in writing an autobiography, which was never actually produced.[82] Instead, in 1995, Bill Landis, who had been an associate of Anger's in the early 1980s, wrote an unofficial biography of him, which Anger himself condemned, describing Landis as "an avowed enemy".[83]
Return to Filmmaking (2000-)
For 20 years from the early eighties, Anger released no new material. In 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, Anger began screening a new short film, the anti-smoking Don’t Smoke That Cigarette, followed a year later by The Man We Want To Hang, which comprised of images of Aleister Crowley’s paintings that had been exhibited at a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, London. In 2004, he began showing Anger Sees Red, a short surrealistic film starring himself, and the same year also began showing another work, Patriotic Penis.
He also performs as Technicolor Skull with Brian Butler. In a scene in John Waters's 2000 movie Cecil B. Demented, the characters are introducing themselves and each one shows the name of an independent director tattooed on his/her arm. One of the characters has Kenneth Anger. Anger makes an appearance in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine entitled FLicKeR.[84] In 2009 his work was featured in a retrospective exhibition at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City,[85] and the following year a similar exhibition took place in London.[86]
Anger has finished writing Hollywood Babylon III, but has not yet published it, fearing severe legal repercussions if he did so. Of this he has stated that "The main reason I didn't bring it out was that I had a whole section on Tom Cruise and the Scientologists. I'm not a friend of the Scientologists."[86] The Church of Scientology has been known on several occasions to heavily sue those making negative accusations against them.
Themes
Several recurring themes can be seen within Anger’s cinematic work. One of the most notable of these is homoeroticism; this was first seen in Fireworks (1947), which was based around Anger’s own homosexual awakening, and featured various navy officers flexing their muscles, and a white liquid (often thought of as symbolising semen), pouring over the protagonist’s body. Similar homoerotic imagery is found in Scorpio Rising (1963), which stars a muscled, topless, leather-clad biker, and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), where a young man sensually polishes a car, with close up shots of his tight-fitting jeans and crotch. Images of naked men also appear in Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), where they are eventually filmed wrestling, and in Anger Sees Red (2004), in which a muscled, topless man performs press-ups.
Another recurring theme in Anger’s films is that of the occult, particularly the symbolism of his own esoteric religion, Thelema. This is visible in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Invocation of My Demon Brother and Lucifer Rising, all of which are based around the Thelemite concept of the Aeon of Horus and feature actors portraying various pagan gods. Anger himself linked the creation of film to the occult, stating that "making a movie is casting a spell."[87]
One of the central recurring images found in Anger's work is the concept of flames and light; in Fireworks there are various examples of this, including a burning Christmas tree, and it subsequently appears in many of his other works as well. This relates to the concept of Lucifer, a deity whom Anger devoted one of his films to, and whose name is Latin for "light bearer".[88]
In many of his films, heavy use is made of music, both classical and pop, to accompany the visual imagery. For instance, in Scorpio Rising he makes use of the 1950s pop song "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, something that he believed was later copied by David Lynch in his 1986 movie Blue Velvet. He first used music to accompany visuals in the 1941 work Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat?, where he used tracks by the Mills Brothers.[28] His use of popular music to accompany his films has been cited as a key influence on the development of music videos and of MTV, although he has stated his dislike for the whole music video industry. One one occasion the band Combustible Edison asked him if he would direct a video to accompany their song "Bluebeard" but he declined the offer, believing that whilst music could be used to accompany film, it was pointless to do it the other way around.[28]
Personal life
"If you are a member of the media, you belong to the public. You've made that Faustian bargain with your public. Take me - all of me - I'm yours."
Kenneth Anger[89]
Anger has always been an "extremely private individual",[90] although has given various interviews over the years, with one interviewer, David Wingrove, describing him as "a joy. Gentle, soft-spoken, immaculately tanned, he looks a good two decades younger than his 78 years".[91] In such interviews, he refuses to disclose information on his name change from Anglemeyer to Anger, telling an interviewer who brought the topic up in 2004 that "You're being impertinent. It says Anger on my passport, that's all you need to know. I would stay away from that subject if I was you."[22] In a 2010 interview however he stated that "I just condensed my name. I knew it would be like a label, a logo. It's easy to remember."[86] Anger is openly homosexual, and has displayed this in some of his works, with one of his friends describing how he "was attracted to people who were either well endowed or the Arnold Schwarzenegger type."[92] He once joked that he was "somewhat to the right of the KKK" in his views about black people,[93] opening him up to criticism, although he is also a passionate supporter of the Free Tibet movement.[94]
Anger is a Thelemite and after many years joined the Thelemic organisation, the Ordo Templi Orientis. He viewed many of the men he associated with as living embodiments of Lucifer, a symbol of the Aeon of Horus in Thelemic philosophy, and had the name of Lucifer tattooed onto his chest. Despite being a Thelemite, Anger has shown an interest in various other religious movements, particularly those that are in some way occult. For instance, he was a lifelong friend of Anton Szandor LaVey, both before and after the founding of the Church of Satan in the 1960s, and lived with LaVey and his family during the 1980s. LaVey also made an appearance in one of Anger's films, Invocation to My Demon Brother (1969) whilst Anger wrote forewords to two of LaVey's books, The Devil's Notebook (1992) and Satan Speaks! (1998). He also describes himself as a "pagan" and refuses to consider himself to be a Satanist.[86]
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