ATTENTION FAIR READERS! We here at Bad Craziness International have been down for a few weeks due to renovations. A few weeks ago, a terrible accident occurred that claimed the lives of 10,000 Bad Craziness Interns. The Bad Craziness Central Aerospace Engineering Department built the first completely operational and inexpensive hovercraft based off of Syd Mead's spinner model in Blade Runnerapproximately 2 weeks ago. Suddenly, an army of rabid mongoose busted through the door completely befuddling Bad Craziness' own Lloyd Dunn, John Lautner and Karl Benz. Suddenly, the mongoose army let out a blood curdling war cry and destroyed everything in the room. The sheer force of the savage mongoose rebels was too much and the jet propulsion systems erupted in a wild science fiction-y rage, destroying a solid 4% of our HQ. It was a sad day, and we send our condolences to the families of our loyal employees. But we are returning with a vengeance! We would like to announce a brand new addition to our HQ. A bigger, better department that we're surprised we've never had before. OFFICIALLY, Bad Craziness International is now acquiring a film studio department! We here at Bad Craziness International are proud to announce our newest addition to the Bad Craziness family: Bad Craziness International Studios. There will be plenty of films being churned out by Bad Craziness International. The debut film will be directed, written, and produced by our very own Dylan Merrick and his crack stock team (also employed by Bad Craziness) and we will announce the title in a few weeks once it goes into production. Be prepared fair readers! We hope this will be a bountiful journey but it will take your viewership which we are not afraid to gain using brute force. Just saying. So fare the well fair readers and welcome to Bad Craziness International Studios!
Bad Craziness' own Richard Pendergast (Dylan Merrick's twin brother, don't ask questions about their last names) sits down with newly resurrected zombie director, Alfred Hitchcock, for an exclusive interview! You don't know Alfred Hitchcock? Check yourself before you wreck yourself; here are a couple links. AS ALWAYS!
~Viva amigos
The Shower Scene in Psycho (1960)
The ending of The Birds (1963)
Jimmy Stewart's nightmare in Vertigo (1958)
The Surrealist delusion sequence in Spellbound (1945)
A small bit on the spring movie season. We just installed the new Bad Craziness Central Audio/Audio Department here at the HQ, so now we're seeing how it does! The picture is the head of the Bad Craziness Central Telepathy & Paranormal Department, Gustaav Smenhoultz. Happy spring folks!
WAIT! Besides the philosophicalimplications, I know what that quote has to do with this post. It's a quote from a film by some of the guys in this post and it explains what 1933 was like in cinema. 1933 was one of those strange years that snuck up on everybody in the film world and left them confused as to what would happen next.
What good is life without a little nudity? Maybe a couple orgasms now and again? If you think life is better off without these things I a) recommend you never watch Ecstasyand b) stop playing World of Warcraft you strange little person.
Most of the films that challenged the censors in the U.S. were crime films. Back in the '30s, sex was REALLY taboo. Besides drugs, sex was so taboo the censors felt the need to make an entire film about it. Ecstasy challenged the Hayes censors and lost a battle it knew it couldn't win. If it's 1933 and your film contains a naked Hedy Lamarr having an orgasm, consider yourself dead in the water compadre. The film faced an extremely limited release in a few art houses in major cities and the word of mouth grew from there.
Ecstasy's legacy is undisputed as one of the most controversial films to hit the silver screen. Along with the being the first non-pornographic films to show full frontal nudity, it's also one of the first films to be condemned by the Legion of Decency. Ecstasy's tale of a suicidal love triangle, divorce, and sexual frustration rocked the Breen Office and the general population like they were the goddamn Casbah and is still pretty risque for the modern day.
Here at Bad Craziness International, these zany gentlemen reign supreme. Outside our main headquarters (as well as a few of our thousands of satellite grounds scattered about the globe/solar system) there is a 30 foot, solid gold statue of the "mirror scene" that was made famous by this film. This film is by far the finest piece the Marx Brothers ever did, and it brought stream of consciousness/political satire to the forefront back in the '30s.
Duck Souprevolves around the life and times of the citizens of "Freedonia" (which on a side note was the name of America directly following the American Revolution), namely the new ruler Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx), Chicolini (Chico Marx), and Pinky (Harpo Marx). Firefly is a cunning but absent-minded autocrat who doesn't care for the citizenry at all but instead cares about his own affairs. Needless to say, the film's anarchic style of comedy became renowned for its fast-pace, quirky delivery, and ridiculous quality. A joke could range from anywhere between a joke about Mrs. Teasdale's (Margaret Dumont, a Marx Brothers staple) taste in men to serious jabs and discourses at the nature of fascism and totalitarian states. This sparked controversy back in 1933 when 4 Jewish guys were cracking jokes about Hitler and Mussolini, who, as you may not know folks, were in fact vehement anti-semites.
Duck Soup has influenced every great comedian and comedy group that you can think of (and believe me, Bad Craziness knows EXACTLY what you're thinking, even before you do). Woody Allen, Monty Python, Benny Hill, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Dave Chappelle, Mel Brooks, the writer of this blog, etc. The Marx Brothers have a hand in almost every bit of comedy that's come out since their ferocious reign as the kings of comedy, especially in terms of political humor. They were able to make political humor extremely dangerous because even when they didn't mean to make political comedy (like Charlie Chaplin), they managed to do it.
"It was Beauty killed the Beast". King Kong is easily the most messed up love story ever told. Not only does it argue in favor of bestiality, it caused riots outside of theaters for its gruesome and extremely sexual content. This piece of cinema history from RKO Radio Pictures shook the world with its innovative special effects (done by Willis O'Brien who also worked on The Lost Worldand I don't mean Jurassic Parkalthough Jeff Goldblum does everything justice) and subversive subtext.
America loves itself some religion. Every Sunday, a vast majority of people head on down to the local steeple and cook them up a heaping helping of Jesus Stew. What's one thing that pisses off these Bible-thumping patriots more than gay marriage? Sex. Weird sex. Homosexuality isn't weird. Sex with animals is weird. At least to the highly religious of all denominations and variations, not just Christians. We here at Bad Craziness don't care what you do in the bedroom or barnyard (or couch or public bathroom or what have you), but religious people care where your pants lance does the dirtiest dirty dance. Aside from the violence in King Kong that originally involved a decapitation and graphic depictions of people being crushed, there is a sexual subtext in the film that disturbed many in the audience: bestiality. In one controversial, legendary scene, it is implied that King Kong gives a virtually naked Fay Wray a little "tickle" off screen that makes her giggle and moan. So if the blood and vicious sound effects weren't going to bother the faint of heart with more religious conviction than the Grand Rabbinate and Pope Urban VI combined, then the implied interracial gangbangs, overt bestiality, and idea that women have sex for reasons other than childbearing might.
King Kong in many ways is the first slasherfilm with its subversive themes and grisly presentation, and its legacy will live on forever. From the classic Claymation to Fay Wray's legendary screams, this is one of our favorite movies and one of the most important films to come out of the cinema dust bowl.
1933 was in a way the last straw to the censors before they signed the Hayes & Breen Code of 1934 and these three movies tell you why, folks. Next time we're hitting up the "greatest year in cinema history"
Follow me on Twitter (DylanMerrick6) and like the Bad Craziness Facebook Page to learn so much about movies, you'll never need to speak to your friends again! Happy Thursday hombres and as always!
The Thirties are often marred by an image of homelessness, abject poverty, the rise of fascism in Europe, civil unrest all over Asia, etc. We here at Bad Craziness don't particularly care for that type of stuff. It really just doesn't matter to us because it's all obviously over. Nowadays we are lucky to live in a world without homelessness and poverty and civil unrest and tyranny, but it's nice to look back at the Thirties and laugh.
Wait, what am I talking about? The Thirties were awesome if you weren't unemployed or starving! It was the Swing Age! Goodman, Charlie Christian, Glenn Miller, Django Reinhardt, SirDuke, Billie; it must have been pretty grand. The music was happy and jumping and so were the movies. Movies rarely dealt with the Depression and with the exception of some subversive humor (The Great Dictator and Duck Soup), the only talk of dictators and fascism came from Disney cartoons and propaganda films, and they loved it. People wanted distractions from their bleak horizons, so to keep the morale high all around the world, movies tried their best to be simple sources of entertainment.
This is what historians who don't know anything about movies will tell you. Movies were just as deep and thought-provoking as they were back in the day and still are now. The Hollywood System was strong as ever but foreign and independent films were also keeping pace. The Thirties are often looked at as one of the greatest periods in film history (even after the Code was established) and we here at Bad Craziness want to give credit to all the different types of movies that came out in this wild, wild decade in cinema. Originally we were going to do 5 years, but our Screening & History Department needed to get quarantined due to an Ebola outbreak, so we were only able to screen 3 years in time for print. Sorry folks! But to start things off we've got
1932!
I. SCARFACE (APRIL 9th, 1932)
Directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson
"Say hello - to my little friend!" That's from the Brian De Palma 1983 film Scarface. This Scarfaceinspired that one and is even more gritty and violent. This one makes the 1983 remake and many other gangster/crime films to come out after it look like a walk in the park with Barney the Dinosaur dressed as a unicorn in a tutu.
Scarface broke new grounds in terms of what you could show on screen. The main actors (Paul Muni and George Raft) built their performances off of real gangsters like Al Capone to make the film seem more realistic and dangerous. Their personas in Scarface became the archetypes that characters like Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, the MacManus Brothers in The Boondock Saints, and every Humphrey Bogart role would come to emulate and work off of.The brutal ending (which I won't give away because it's too brilliant to rob you of the experience, fair reader) shocked and appalled executives to the point that they ordered an alternative ending be filmed and used. Good thing they scrapped the alternative ending because it would make the movie lose some of its swagger.
Along with The Public Enemyand Little Caesar, Scarface made those evil animals in the Hayes Office decide to create the censorship codes that wouldn't be broken until 1968 by films like The Graduateand Bonnie & Clyde. More than that though, these Pre-Code crime films and especially Scarface blurred the line between judgement and glory, right and wrong, hakuna and matata (alright maybe not that last one) with gritty screenplays, grisly violence, and shadowy, almost horror-esque feel to them that would influence every film noir and neo-noir to come.
II. FREAKS! (FEBRUARY 20th, 1932
Directed by Tod Browning
If you think any of the Sawfilms or The Haunting in Connecticutare scary, you obviously haven't seen Tod Browning's Freaks. Using actual circus sideshow "freaks", Tod Browning's film is one of those subversive films we mentioned before that apparently didn't exist in the '30s.
Why do people forget about this movie? Perhaps because it was banned for 30 years due to its horrifying content. The original cut of the film featured graphic castration, mutilation, and even someone getting their arms and legs melted down to look like the wings and feet of a duck. The screenplay was lauded by most of MGM's executives and director Tod Browning wasn't allowed to use big name actors to help sell the film. Executives also cut over 30 minutes of footage so that audiences wouldn't run in fear every time they saw a dwarf. One woman even sued MGM for the movie because it apparently caused her to have a miscarriage.
Freaks is undoubtedly one of the most controversial films ever made and thus has become a midnight movie/counterculture icon. But perhaps instead of just being an interesting film to see while in the throes of an acid trip (which it is if you're into absolutely terrifying experiences), Freaks is one of the first films to preach of tolerance and the loosening of control by governing bodies because the freaks can always rise up and turn them into hideous duck people.
III. THE MUMMY (DECEMBER 22nd, 1932)
Directed by Karl Freund
The '30s were the heyday of the Universal Horrors. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, and of course, our feautre here: The Mummy. Before the Ebola outbreak in the Screening & History Department's multiplex claimed the life of our Horror expert, Bela Lugosi (of no relation to the famed actor, but of relation to The Mummy's star Boris Karloff), we were going to do a feature on all the big Universal Horror monsters. But alas, without a mind like that it would be a boring, ill-informed piece not worth your time, fair readers.
What separates The Mummyfrom the other Universal Horror pictures? Is it the advanced camera work and cinematography? Is it the in depth research that went into making the complicated storyline? Is it the intricate costuming and set design that made all the actual filming happen at night? The answer is yes. It is all these things. The slow, creeping camera put the film into Imhotep's point of view as opposed to the other Universal Horrors that spoke specifically from the protagonist's point of view. What about the themes of the film?
The Mummy is one of the first horror films that showed what a horror film is supposed to be: scary as hell and even more subversive. The dead Pharaoh; the specter of the past haunting the ever so curious archaeologist? SOUNDS LIKE A FIGURATIVE MEANING! There are a million ways to analyze The Mummy and that's what makes it the first "modern" horror film: every piece of the production contains layers, some that are just plain creepy and some that stay in your brain so you can think about them and wonder why they're there, like that weird 45 year old guy in the trench coat at the back of the bar.
It's not a coincidence that these highly subversive films came out during the year of a presidential election, folks. Cinema can be creepy and all conspiracy-theorist-y too. There's a lot more to 1930's cinema than happy little musicals and guys in Frankenstein masks. However, the movies we put here are nowhere NEAR the entirety of even 1932, they're just a couple of our favorites. For a better look at 1932, try these on for size:
More to come from all of us here at Bad Craziness folks! Follow me on Twitter and like the Facebook Page for simply TOO MUCH about movies! Happy Tuesday hombres, go outside and get some sunlight (just kidding it's raining) and as always,
There's a fantastic documentary about the emergence of grunge back in1991 called 1991: The Year Punk Broke. This post has nothing to do with that film.
However, 1927 is one of the years where cinema broke so I guess that's why I decided to include that little bit. Or maybe it was the complaint of one reader that I don't have interesting introductions (pardon me for not having jetpacks like the intro to Thunderball). Whatever the reason, it's time to get beyond that and step right into 1927 which is by far one of the most important years in movies!
I. WINGS (AUGUST 12th, 1927)
Directed by William A. Wellman
I personally find it pretty awesome that the first movie and the last movie to win the Best Picture Oscar are the only two silent films on the list. Wingsis the first big winner at the first Academy Awards and to many it stops there, but this film has a lot more to it than just that. It's actually good (it's not Slumdog Millionaireor worst of all Titanic).
Wingsmarked the end of true recognition for American silent cinema, but it was a fine note to end on. Plus, along with Itand Mantrap, exhibited Clara Bow during the peak of her career.
II. METROPOLIS (JANUARY 10th, 1927)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang is the King of Weird. In terms of film, this guy's like Klaus Nomi's biological grandfather (his grandmother being David Bowie). Metropolisis one of Lang's best, one of his weirdest, and perhaps his most important.
One thing that a lot of moviegoers don't pay much heed to is sets. Sets are one of the most complicated and important aspects of filmmaking. Sets determine almost everything about a scene or a shot and Metropolisis one of those movies that defines what a great set is. Taking a nod from other German Expressionist films, Lang and his set crew built sets (that's right, Fritz Lang was such a total bad ass that he helped build the sets so no one could screw it up) that are nightmarish, angled, and some of the sickest realizations of pre-Jetsons retrofuturism ever put on film. This wild surrealist dream-like silent film experience is so revered that German techno band Kraftwerk released a new restoration of it with a complete electronica soundtrack. When I say this film is golden folks, I mean itmakes Saddam Hussein's palace look like the dilapidated cardboard box that Clint Eastwood was raised in by rabid wolves.
The film deals with the then-current rise of fascism in Germany, as well as the pitfalls of capitalism and Soviet communism. Metropolisis one of the first movies to give some academic/intellectual legitimacy to film, but especially science fiction and horror cinema. That is why we geeks (like Terry Gilliam of Monty Python, Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, and Stanley Kubrick) love it so much. When a card-carrying member of the complete nerd community (such as myself) watches this movie, think of it as being akin to a Buddhist watching Siddhartha Gautama strumming out a few verses of WAR's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" on the old keytar.
III. NAPOLEON (APRIL 7th, 1927)
Directed by Abel Gance
Abel Gance is the greatest director of the Silent Era. Rednecks and other racial purists might boast about D. W. Griffith; hippies and hipsters may talk about some weird Indian woman who recorded a Bengal Tiger sleeping for 8 hours and call it art; normal people who aren't easily categorized by wretched, terrible savages like me might say Cecil B. DeMille because they can't think of anyone else; then again they might also say "get away from me with that tape recorder you strange little shell of a man and quit asking me about movies", but that only happened to me once. Movie people who know movies and love movies as if movies were some weird appendage flying out of their heads know that no one was able to do what Abel Gance did. Napoleonis this brilliant director's magnumopus.
Napoleondidn't gain the recognition it deserved back in the day because its technical beauty was beyond comprehension in these early, golden days of cinema. Yet today in the modern world, it is revered and respected as one of the greatest pieces of all time.
Well fair readers, we have to leave the Jazz Age in favor of the Great Depression (which makes this sound a lot worse than it is), but the effect of these early days will stay with us forever. Especially with The Artistwinning Best Picture, these movies are gaining more notice than ever before and deservedly so. But now, with a tear in our eyes, a song in our hearts, and excitement in our unmentionables, we leave the Roaring Twenties for the 1930's: The Cinema Dust Bowl. Next time here on Bad Craziness it's
1932!
For a better look at the cinema of 1927 be sure to check out these movies folks OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES:
That's all from Bad Craziness! Follow me on Twitter and like the Facebook Page for literally TOO MUCH information on movies! Dancing Days are here again hombres and remember as always,
We're half way through the Jazz Age and film is on a fiery, dangerous trail hellbent on changing the world for good. Movies were moving so fast it'd make your head spin with such centrifugal force, you may be mistaken for a blender. 1925 marked a year in innovation comparable to the invention of string cheese (meaning it was a groundbreaking, historic, celebrated time). In the world of cinema circa 1925, things were like this in the words of a better man than, I fair readers:
I. THE LOST WORLD (FEBRUARY 2ND & JUNE 22ND, 1925)
There are very few films that can say they've influenced as many movies as The Lost World. And The Lost World can't say it because it's a silent filmGET IT??? Anyways, before my comedy gets any worse, let me spin you why this movie changed so much.
The effect that this non-Sherlock HolmesSir Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation has had on visuals is equivalent -- if not beyond -- the effect that Star Warsor The Matrixhas had. The stop motion/Claymation we laugh at with love in our hearts during Christmas time when we watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeerall began with this movie. In fact, the special effects designer for another film famous for its stop motion (the original RKOKing Kong), Willis O'Brien, got his start by pioneering his method in The Lost World. It was so frightening back in the day that people became frenzied at the likeness, running out of the theater without realizing they didn't live in prehistoric times/an uncharted region of South America. The interactions between the stop-motion dinosaurs and the actual actors was unprecedented until the 1940's with televised cartoons. This story of adventure, romance, and prehistoric animals shocked and exhilarated audiences; propelling cinema to new heights and probably causing several heart attacks in its wake.
II. THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (DECEMBER 21st, 1925)
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
"That movie with the stairs and the old lady, right?" To many in America, The Battleship Potemkinis a classic but they don't know why or they don't know it at all. This Soviet propaganda film changed a lot about cinema in terms of themes and presentation. Think like Quentin Tarantino only instead of snappy dialogue and Spaghetti Western references, it's got themes of Bolshevism and history that never happened.
Potemkin was one of the first movies to have a discourse on violence. It celebrates the death of a Czarist ship captain at the hands of a mutinous crew, but when the Cossacks shoot at will into a crowd, nobody's very happy about it. Besides these philosophical quandaries, the film also revolutionized the "tracking shot". You know how in movies the camera moves in sync with the action of a scene? Like in the 1998 Godzillawhen Matthew Broderick and the mini-Godzillas are chasing each other around adorably in Madison Square Garden? Or in every shot of a Michael Bay movie? Okay, that's a bad example, people shouldn't be watching Michael Bay movies. But tracking shots are one of the basic "variant" shots in movies, and in the famous Steps scene of The Battleship Potemkin we find one of the most influential uses of all time (which is why it's the link up above).
Every pretentious film school loser may talk about this film like it's God's gift to the Earth (but they use God figuratively, religion's too mainstream) and it's not; it's Sergei Eisenstein's and our good friends in the old USSR's propaganda office. This movie showed people the value in moving the camera and using production as well as the plot line to introduce and analyze themes, thus setting the grounds for the study of film as an art form.
III. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (NOVEMBER 25th, 1925)
No, sorry folks, this version is not the one with Gerard Butler. This version (the original version) of Phantom stars the man of a thousand faces himself, Lon Chaney. In one of his most revered roles (plus he's alongside one of the most beautiful ladies of cinema, Mary Philbin), Chaney dons the mask of the Phantom, but when it's stripped away, cinema changed forever.
The Phantom of the Operarevolutionized a few things. For starters, Chaney's innovative costume and make up gave the art of film design a greater depth than it had before. On the same production note, Phantom changed the way we see movies. To add to the theatrical and Expressionist vibes of the film, editors Lois Weber and Maurice Pivar and cinematographer Virgil Miller worked together to change the way we see movies. While filming, Miller put colored gels on the lens of the camera to change the tint of the scene. In some scenes in fact, Technicolor was used in the process thus making The Phantom of the Opera one of the first color films. To bring out the colors, Miller used extreme lighting techniques (seen in Expressionist horror films like Dr. Caligariand classic film noirs such as The Big Combo or The Third Man) to accentuate the look of each shot. In the editing room, Pivar and Weber sharpened the look of each frame and used dramatic cuts to make the whole thing work together. In the words of a corny educational children's program: and the rest is history!
Phantom may not be the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical that we all know (meaning it's actually really good), but with its history of experimentation and some of the most remarkable performances from the Silent Era, we here at Bad Craziness believe it's an enduring legend and one of our favorite films.
Post-production is that phase in movie making that filmmakers dread, but audiences love. Filmmakers dread it because it's where you think all your problems will go away. Audiences love it because it's where all the cool special effects and wacky sounds come in to make a movie look really, really cool.
On Monday, we here at Bad Craziness took a day trip to West Philadelphia for a small film convention. At the convention, we heard about a nearby auction for old school negatives/original shoot film reels. Beings that we're nerdy film students, we jumped on this opportunity faster than you can say "Clark Gable has a manly mustache" and tried to get everything we could. Tragically, they only had the negatives and old reels of good movies so we couldn't get all of them but the ones we got are SPECTACULAR.
The most entertaining thing about these negatives is comparing them to the finished post-production products everybody knows so well. I'll start things off in chronological order:
The opening gun barrel sequence of a James Bond movie is iconic. Everybody knows that it epitomizes cool, and those who don't think so are locked away in dungeons and forced to watch From Justin to Kellyfor 20 hours straight by the MI6. But what most movie viewers don't know is what this sequence really looked like. Here's the still we swiped at the auction of what this actually looked like.
Before post
As you can clearly see, fair reader, they touched up this photo a lot if post. Besides getting rid of the floor, thus granting James Bond the ability to fly, they moved his shadow and gave him a bowler hat.
Perhaps the greatest feat in this piece of post-production is the touching story behind it. As is obviously true, Sean Connery lost his arm in a battle of wits with a tiger during the First Boer War. This always made him extremely self-conscious and unwilling to get into acting. However, the James Bond folks knew he was the only person suave enough, cool enough, and manly enough to take on such a role (since it was all downhill from there), so they told him about the magic of post-production. In post, they gave this famous amputee a new arm, and even changed his position to make it look like he had it all along.
It's said that there are only four times when Sean Connery cried: 1) When he lost his arm to that savage beast (even though he still won the fight in the end; delivering it a crushing blow with a pygmy gentleman he found crouching in a tree) 2) When the Allies won World War II 3) When they put preserves instead of jelly on his PB&J (Sean Connery couldn't stand Smucker's since they sounded like a bunch of Republicans) and 4) When the whizzes in Dr. No's post-production team gave him a new arm, and a new life.
It's almost as if it's a completely different movie or a really bad knock off by untalented college kids. The story behind this shot is pretty amazing in terms of production. Obviously, everything looks completely different. Dustin Hoffman's classic short quasi-bowl cut hair is long and luscious; his clothes are almost nothing like what we know as his clothes in the scene; the room looks literally nothing like the room the scene takes place in. Perhaps the most shocking difference is the angle. You see folks, the cameraman was drunk during the shoot following a fight with his soon-to-be ex-wife, but since time is money in the movie business, Mike Nichols (the director) decided to go on with the shoot anyway. What came next, no one expected.
The scene was set. Anne Bancroft looks sexy as all hell in her femme fatale, MILF role (minus the cargo pants that would be taken out in post); she rolled down her stocking slowly; all Hell breaks loose and several of the crew members who went missing are still yet to be found. No one was expecting her to be that pale in the set lighting and it made several people step outside to vomit, have a smoke, and talk to their psychoanalysts. Everyone was off the set except the director and of course, the drunk cameraman who, at the sight of Anne Bancroft's pasty flesh, fell over while the camera was still rolling, and shot the ENTIRE SCENE 90 degrees to the left.
Some might say it was the leg hair, but we here Bad Craziness know everybody loves women with hairy legs. III. THE POSTER SHOT IN A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
After post
Whether you like extreme psycho-sexual violence and torture or not, A Clockwork Orangeis one of the greatest, most wholesome family films in the history of cinema. This poster is a classic, but it comes with a funny story of how it came to be.
Before post
This is the original still they were thinking of using for the film. While in the depths of a cocaine binge in a dark room, Malcolm McDowell was ordered to stop what he was doing immediately by Stanley Kubrick and get onto the set. As McDowell turned around, he reached the lowest point of his high and suddenly went completely catatonic. Kubrick, who was renowned in New York as a still photographer prior to becoming a filmmaker and was also on cocaine, became inspired. He grabbed a camera, put his pocket knife in McDowell's catatonic Kung Fu grip, grabbed a desk lamp, tore off his favorite I Love Lucyt-shirt and covered the light to make some shadows, and took the now famous snapshot.
Needless to say the people in post, who were on somewhat less cocaine, were not as inspired by the photo as Kubrick or McDowell (who remained catatonic for the rest of the day's shoot, hence the freaky prison scenes), so they opted to have Bill Gold come in a draw a dramatic recreation. Everybody was happy except the English government, who blamed the film for a spike in crime back in '71.
IV. THE "HERE'S JOHNNY" SHOT IN THE SHINING
After post
In post, they created this poster by splicing two separate shots from The Shining(another Kubrick flick for you people) and rolling with it. The scene's a famous one. Jack Nicholson hacks through the door with an axe, Shelley Duvall screams to high horsefaced Heaven, and Jack goes "Heeeeeeeeeeeeere's JOHNNY!" and things go haywire. But you only got to see it after post, so here's the story before post.
Before post
Jack Nicholson is a famous ladies man. Maybe it's the fame; maybe it's the front row Lakers' tickets; maybe it's the eyebrows. Whatever it is, Jack gets the ladies. On every set, he'd charm all the ladies and do what Jackie does best. But on the set of The Shining he wasn't feeling his A-Game. Maybe it was the fact that he knew Carter was screwed for the next election (he couldn't stand Ronald Reagan after living in California or being a real movie star); maybe it was his eyebrows not functioning in their normal demonic way. These hypotheses have all been tested, but rendered no results. The real reason is his leading lady in the film, Shelley Duvall.
Shelley Duvall is a woman who got places with her acting talents, not her looks. She didn't live during a time when Sarah Jessica Parker could be in a show called Sex & the City; she lived in a time when Sarah Jessica Parker would be in a show called Mr. Ed. Nicholson, the classic charmer, felt no attraction to Shelley Duvall, so he wasn't as into the film as he wanted to be. Kubrick did this on purpose so the post-award show parties wouldn't be awkward. If you'd pay special attention to Nicholson's eyes readers, he's not looking at Duvall. This is from an alternative take before the real take and post-production. Jack was so horrified by Shelley Duvall's teeth that he couldn't complete this now-legendary scene. He famously ran off the set in tears, wondering how God could give him such a looker to work with. Luckily for Jack, Kubrick sometimes had a heart and told him that if he'd finish the shoot with a body double for Duvall, he'd buy him some ice cream. Jack Nicholson, being the avid Rocky Road fan, jumped at the opportunity. Kubrick brought in a pretty body double and the famous shot took place.
The people in post were glad to help Jack Nicholson out (probably fearing their own demise), so they let him keep the takes with him and the double for personal use. As for the real take, the good old boys of post just added some shots of Duvall howling like the strange-looking monkey woman she is and everybody went to have some Rocky Road, courtesy of Kubrick.
V. THE POSTER STILL FOR AMERICAN BEAUTY
After post
This is one of my favorite movies of all time and to me, it's the greatest American film of the 1990's. No, I'm not one of those nerdy film boys who think Pulp Fictionor Rushmoreor The Shawkshank Redemptionis the greatest film of the '90's (even though I love every single one of them and they are definitely some of the greatest films of the '90's). And I definitely don't think Princess Mononoke(the American-English dub/subtitled version) is the greatest film of the '90's because I have the ability to speak to girls (even though it's also an amazing film). American Beautyis just one of those movies that everybody, critics and audiences alike, knew is beyond incredible and deserved all every award and bit of praise that it received. This famous still from this famous movie has an interesting and not so famous story behind it.
Before post
Kevin Spacey's guilty pleasure in American Beauty is his teenage daughter's best friend, played by Mena Suvari. Director, Sam Mendes, was a rookie. This was his debut film and he figured that once shooting was done, that was it and he was done. He completely forgot about scheduling a promotional stills shoot at anytime before, during, or after filming. Luckily, his cousin-in-law was none other than Wolfgang Puck who knew plenty of food photographers. He scrambled together a lighting crew and his cast for a day-long promotional shoot. Since it was a few weeks after shooting had finished, everybody kind of let themselves go. Mendes originally wanted to do a Bad Lieutenanttype of still with Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening, but this idea was dropped for undisclosed reasons. They decided to go with something simple that spoke about the movie. The random food photographer (whose insistence on all this "naked" shots made everyone think Puck's accent made it sound like "food" but he actually meant "porn") told Mena Suvari to disrobe and lay on the ground. She was hesitant and then when she took her shirt off people were in shock.
Just like Anne Bancroft in The Graduate, she looked so pale. She as so pale, Spacey even made a joke that went "WOW MENA! You're so pale, the whiteness almost drowns out your sweet chest hair." Mena started crying about her paleness, but the random photographer told her that everybody gets pale sometimes, it was winter anyway. He then added that they could just touch it up in post!
The end result is quite different from the original, and we can thank the folks in post for that. They took that pale mess and ended up with a classic movie poster that influenced plenty more promotional stills to come. Spacey was so upset that they removed the hair that he decided to move to Europe.
Ah, post-production: the easy way out. You're told in film school that post-production is a last resort and you want to get it all right the first time, but these stories tell you something a little bit different. From all of us here at Bad Craziness, happy Wednesday hombres! Follow me on Twitter (@DylanMerrick6) and like the Facebook Page to get so much movie knowledge, no one will want to speak to you ever again! As always,
~Viva amigos, ~D. Merrick
All "Before post" stills shot by Dylan Merrick with Ciara Musson, Megan Markle, and of course the man, the myth, the legend Mr. Beckett Mufson.
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