A Blog of My Own

Finding film history worth reading is like finding an economist with an accurate prediction — good luck with that. The trade seems to invite charlatans, writers who rely on secondary research, and writers who coast on a little research and a lot of received opinion and impressionistic “b.s.” Greeting card paper stock should be made of 100% recycled content; film history books shouldn’t be.

The books of Rudy Behlmer aren’t.

Behlmer’s books are content-rich, and written in a self-effacing style. But self-effacing style is not absence of style, and just because Behlmer gets out of the way of his subject matter doesn’t mean his writing lacks character. On the contrary, the clarity and grace of his style inspire confidence that what you are reading is true; and so his style is essential to the pleasure his books bring. You sense as you read him that you are in the presence of a writer who would be ashamed to tell you something he couldn’t substantiate, and equally ashamed to pad a paragraph with gossamer speculation.

Responsibility to that thing we call “the movies” is another value that emerges from a Behlmer book. The reader can hear him saying, “The only reason to write this book at all is to add, reliably, to film history; hell, the only reason for me to write the next word is to add reliably to film history.” He loves the movies too much to do anything else, just as he loves the movies too much to write less than well about them.

Behlmer — who had a career directing live television in the fifties, and then as a producer for the Leo Burnett advertising agency in the sixties through eighties — first made a broad national impact, book-wise, with Memo from David O. Selznick (1972). (Previously he had written several pieces, starting in 1961, for the magazine Films in Review and then co-authored, with Tony Thomas and Clifford McCarty, The Films of Errol Flynn. An article he wrote about Selznick for FIR, for which he interviewed Selznick, led indirectly to Memo after Selznick’s death.) Granted access by Selznick’s son to the legendary producer’s missives to those who worked for him, Behlmer pulled off an organizational tour de force, selecting and structuring so as to do what might have seemed impossible — create a compelling read from the contents of two thousand file boxes! We’re by Selznick’s side, taking his dictation, at the creation of 66 films, including such classics as Gone With the Wind, Rebecca and Spellbound. From the book’s nearly 500 pages of business directives, an engrossing narrative emerges, as well as a coherent sense of the man’s character. That is Behlmer’s work.

As if shaping these memos into a page-turner weren’t contribution enough to film scholarship, Behlmer’s “Editor’s Foreword” is an essential essay on Selznick and his working methods. Regarding the book as a whole, the Newsweek reviewer had this to say at the time: “I can’t imagine how a book on the American movie business could be more illuminating, more riveting or more fun to read than this collection of David Selznick’s memos.”

For Behlmer in his own words from start to finish, read America’s Favorite Movies: Behind the Scenes, a series of chapter-length essays on the creation of classic films like Gunga Din, Casablanca, and the 1938 Errol Flynn The Adventures of Robin Hood. The title could as easily have been Rudy’s Favorite Movies, because a number of them are; when he was a lad, Behlmer saw the three-strip Technicolor Robin Hood, and hasn’t been the same since.

Behlmer returned to the memo-well with two other books, Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century Fox and Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951): The Battles, The Brainstorms, and the Bickering from the Files of Hollywood’s Greatest Studio. Both are must-reads, made so by Behlmer’s editorial notes and structuring as much as by the invaluable nature of the primary source materials themselves.

In addition to these books (and others), Behlmer has written the liner notes for what must be dozens of essential film music releases (he has a particular interest in the work of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Miklos Rozsa, and can hum on demand the themes from any number of notable film scores of the Golden Age). Today, he is on call with the major film studios to provide commentary tracks for their classic DVD releases; you can hear him accompanying Gone With the Wind, among many other films. His commentary tracks consistently receive appreciative mention on the various DVD-review websites, since they are as content-rich, and as interesting, as his books. You’ll also see him occasionally turn up in a behind-the-scenes documentary on a DVD or on Turner Classic Movies, and in July he programmed a month’s worth of “big bands in the movies” for the channel (the swing bands of his youth being another of his interests).

Since the 1980s he has been married to the lovely Stacey Behlmer, née Endres, a partner of Rudy’s in film scholarship since she is a staff member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Margaret Herrick Library.

I first knew Rudy in the late seventies, when he was assigned to produce a commercial I’d written at Leo Burnett. It is hard for me to remember another person with whom I hit it off so instantly. I knew who he was before this, having read (and loved) the Selznick book when it came out a few years before. In my late twenties at the time, I was quite excited to be collaborating on a commercial with the author of that book. I think Rudy enjoyed meeting and working with someone of the “hippie generation” who, first of all, knew who he was; and second of all, while not knowing a tenth of what he knew, at least knew what he was on about. (And someone who could hum some great Korngold and Rozsa themes back at him, in our own version of “Stump the Band.”) We have remained friends through visits and phone calls all the years since, and my wife and I are now looking forward eagerly to our next visit with Rudy and Stacey in Los Angeles, in January.

Rudy, you are more than (in the words of a director we both worked with, about someone else) “a legend in your own lunchtime.” You are an example of continued productivity that is a model for us all. I suspect it has been your hope that your work would be a resource for film scholars in all generations to come. I also suspect that, since you’ve always had a pretty clear-eyed view of things, you figured it would. Well, you’re right.

We all stuff our faces on Thanksgiving, but not like this. Enjoy this new facepainting o’ the season from our friend, mad genius/artist James Kuhn. Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

When people type LOL, do you actually think they were laughing out loud? I don’t. If it were true, our offices, streets, and Starbuckses would be a cacophony of cackling from morning till night.

It’s like when people say, “It was so cold, I literally froze to death.” No you din’t. You’re here. You didn’t literally die. Maybe you metaphorically “froze to death.” Maybe you felt as if you were freezing to death. But you didn’t freeze to death. So stop claiming that you literally did, you liar.

We need a new texting/emailing abbreviation for the response people actually make when they read something funny on their screens. I suggest CI, for “Chortling Inwardly.” Your suggestions are welcome.

Everybody cried when Obama won. (Everybody decent, anyway.) But lately I’ve been crying at all sorts of other things, and Obama is to blame.

When the musical movie version of Hairspray came out, I loved it. (If you don’t believe me, see here.) But it was on the other night on HBO, and I watched it again, and it got me as never before — it made me cry almost nonstop from beginning to end. Hairspray is only nominally about a teenage girl trying to get on a local TV dance show. Its true subject is liberation. Racial liberation, sexual liberation, fat liberation, agoraphobic liberation, and probably three or four other kinds of liberation I can’t think of. Nearly every song in the score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and nearly every dance devised by director-choreographer Adam Shankman, propels this theme single-mindedly — is, at root, about liberation.

When a movie (or other work of art, or real life event) makes you cry, it is never because of a direct, unmediated link between it and your brain’s sob center. There is always a thought in between. The art doesn’t make you cry; the art makes you think a thought, and the thought makes you cry. In this case, the thought was: “These black teens in 1962 were just trying to get on a TV dance show in Baltimore, and now a black man is President.”

Though I was taken aback by my tears when Obama won the election, I didn’t expect the event to sensitize me to so many encounters that have come after. Especially not two whole weeks after. Especially not re-watchings of fun, frothy musicals I’ve already seen. But it has.

I’m going to see the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s first-ever production of Porgy and Bess on Friday. I’m going to be a complete mess.

My consciousness was raised just last week (the day before the press conference) about the importance of adopting dogs from shelters rather than buying them from breeders, since there are so many waiting for adoption.

The issue, however, now seems poised to bring down the Obama presidency before it starts. I think that’s taking it a little far.

I’m all for doing the right thing, canine-wise. Right now, however, the extinction of the United States of America is a more pressing issue, and I’d like Obama to be able to address that (and, if possible, head it off) without being hounded by dog lovers. Heel.

For the last year or so, our friend, artist James Kuhn, who lives in Three Oaks, Michigan, has been painting his face. Every single day. And doing it differently each day. As you can see, his face paintings are remarkable — in some cases his face is hard to see under the painting, but it’s there, all right. Sometimes he uses one of his own facial features (an eye, an ear, whatever) to represent an analogous feature in the artwork. Sometimes he completely obscures his own features. It’s trompe-l’oeil brought home — as close to home as you can get, taking the part of the body that most individuates us as humans and utterly transforming it (not just decorating it) through art.

Now he’s world-famous. The Brits have discovered him, and articles about his amazing art project have appeared in The Mail, The Sun, The Telegraph, and on Metro.co.UK.

You can see all of James’ facework at his Flickr site.

Madman or genius? I think I’ll go with mad genius. I hope he won’t think that’s two-faced of me.