The Dehumanization Of Movies: Scrooge Was Always Into Numbers, But Now He's Made Of Them

By Lars Trodson

Is it possible to adapt yet another version of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" without having read the book?

There are so many versions of this story -- starring everything from Barbie to animals to Muppets to Mr. Magoo -- yet all remain so faithful to the same template that it is not unreasonable to ask if filmmaker Robert Zemeckis even cracked open this modest ghost tale to make his digitized 3-D version of the story.

He may have read it, but his inspiration -- for the screenplay and not the look of the film -- appears to be other filmed versions of the story. Zemeckis even yanked, for no apparent reason, a reference from a lovely little 1935 English version of the story called "Scrooge" into his own. It's at the beginning of both films when a butcher throws out a chicken leg to some hungry kids.

In Zemeckis' version I think the butcher has the voice of Bob Hoskins (who also later voices old Fezziwig, alive again!). There's no specific reference to this butcher in the Dickens' text, but given that Zemeckis and his animators copied the shape of the window directly from the 1935 version (and also made it a basement window, as does the 1935 film) seems to indicate a preference for filmic sources rather than written ones.

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A Note of Thanks from Bill Gold

I always said that I was lucky to go to work everyday working in the movie business. I didn't make the movies, of course, but I was often responsible for the first impression of a film people were about to see. I was fortunate to be associated with so many famous films, to be sure, but I loved the movies and the filmmakers I worked with - the famous ones and the not so famous. I think that was one of the reasons I had such a long career. I admire people who make movies, and I'm a movie fan. I am grateful for the fact that so many creative people put their trust in me to connect the audience with their films.

I am also gratified by the reception my work has received over the years, and the recent attention given to it by the story on Roundtable Pictures (written so artfully by Lars Trodson). The comments I've received personally and on the website have meant a great deal to me. Thank you all to everyone who took the time to write.

For the next few months I'll be busy working on a book that will illustrate many of the posters I designed during my days at Warner Bros. and BG Charles and Bill Gold Advertising. There are more than 2,000 posters in a 63 year career, including versions people have never seen. The evolution of these designs is as fascinating as the making of the movies themselves. Each poster has an interesting story. I know these images are important to many of you, and they mean a great deal to me, so I think the story is worth telling. The book is scheduled to be published in late 2010.

Thank you again for taking the time to appreciate the work I've helped create.

All the best to everyone,

Bill Gold

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Film New Hampshire announces upcoming screenings of our work

Click on the link below for the story on Roundtable Pictures screening its latest film, "Tuesday Morning," our Doritos ad, and our award-winning film "The Listeners" at the Red Door in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

New Hampshire-based Roundtable Pictures debuts new film and Doritos ad

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Check Out Our Doritos Ad

Mike Gillis and I had been talking about our next film -- one we hoped to start filming around Christmas -- when we also started to explore the idea of creating advertisements. There is, obviously, a real craft and art to making a great ad, and there is a kind of storytelling discipline to it that we find appealing.

One day, during these discussions, Mike sent me a link to a contest, www.crashthesuperbowl.com, which was sponsored by Doritos and offered a million dollar prize. It seemed like the right thing to do, so I came up with a script, Mike started to talk to technicians and sound people, and we explored a few casting ideas. We immediately came up with a few names of guys we knew were funny, but not actors, and said let's just move right ahead. So we asked Scott Bourget, who is the CFO of the company I work for; Mark Dearborn, who is a graphic designer and who created the gorgeous Roundtable Pictures logo, and Chris Curtis, who is an actor and film programmer, and who also starred in our earlier short film, "A Bootful of Fish." They all said yes.

Mike talked to Jonathon Millman, who had shot our films "The Listeners" (2005) and "A Bootful of Fish" (2006), and Jonathon helped assemble guys like Sean Mitchell, who let us use his digital camera; Stan Barker, who did the sound, and Jason Santo, who brought his light kit, and Dave Langley and a whole crew of other people who filled up a beautiful house in Dover, NH for an entire day one Sunday.

The shoot was fun -- continuing the Roundtable ethos that you can try to create something worthwhile and also have a good time. We were supported by the fact that we had three great actors play the girlfriends, Angel Smith, Adrienne Montezonis and Dianna Larocque. They were all great.

Mike and I spent a couple of nights editing, and Mike picked out the music from the toolkit supplied by Doritos. He made sure the "Doritos crunch" was used properly, and he and I had a little celebration when we uploaded the video at his house one night.

Check out our ad by clicking the image below (click "skip intro" on the splash page to jump straight to the ad). If you want to look at others, visit www.crashthesuperbowl.com. To see what others have said about it, you can look it up under the title, "The Main Ingredient", or by director, which is Roundtablepictures. If you are sampling "all" videos, it's number 1496. Post a comment if you so choose.

Thanks,

LT

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The Gold Standard: Roundtable Pictures Interviews Legendary Movie Poster Designer Bill Gold

In a career spanning more than 60 years and more than 2,000 movie poster creations, Gold led the way in how the world sees the movies

Classics include "Casablanca", "My Fair Lady", "The Exorcist" and "Unforgiven"

By Lars Trodson

Bill Gold had a dilemma.

The dilemma wasn't due to the fact that he had a poster to design for a major Clint Eastwood movie that would be released in 1988. He had designed posters for Eastwood before. In fact Gold had designed posters for every Eastwood movie dating back to "Dirty Harry." The dilemma also wasn't that he had too few ideas for the poster, or too many.

The dilemma was this: the poster was for the movie, "Bird", which Eastwood had directed. It told the story of Charlie Parker -- a drug addicted jazz musician. Only the studio, Warner Bros., didn't really want a poster that suggested that the movie was about a drug addicted jazz musician. That wouldn't sell to a broad audience. What to do?

What you do is what Bill Gold suggests. His idea prevailed -- just as they have during a remarkable career designing movie posters for such diverse directors as Arthur Penn, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah, Mike Nichols, and Ridley Scott and many, many more. The sheer volume of Gold's work over 60 years -- for movies as diverse as "A Clockwork Orange" to the first theatrical "Get Smart" movie called "The Nude Bomb" -- is staggering.

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The Original Grindhouse War Movie: Enzo G. Castellari’s ‘Inglorious Bastards'

By Lars Trodson

The biggest difference between Quentin Tarantino’s movie “Inglourious Basterds” and Enzo G. Castellari’s “The Inglorious Bastards” is not the fact that there is almost no similarity between the stories of the two movies. The real difference is that there is not one sentimental frame in Castellari’s version - human beings are dispatched with remarkable efficiency and frequency with not one iota of regret.

Tanrantino’s film, on the other hand, is steeped in sentimentality -- he’s got nostalgia for grindhouse films, the the films of World War II, the old glamour of Hollywood, for the earlier version of the film he remade, for old-time villains and cinematic heroes and for the women who sometimes love them. His “Inglourious Basterds” is really a nostalgia trip.

Castellari’s 1978 film is an opera of carnage. None of the violence is terribly explicit -- you won’t find the sickening realism of “Saving Private Ryan” here. But scores and scores and scores of people are killed during 99 minutes, including (spoiler alert!) some of the lead characters. But, honestly, Castellari wasn’t much interested in having you care about these people anyway.

It’s all about the explosions and the gunfire.

Castellari’s film is so defiantly unsentimental that the only character that expresses any criticism of warfare is a German soldier named Adolf Sachs (Raimond Harmstorf) who decides to throw his lot in with the Americans.

Sachs is also at the center of a remarkable, and brutal, misunderstanding that actually sets the plot in motion. This occurs almost halfway through the film. It’s an ingenious twist, and one that would be heartbreaking if Castellari and screenwriters Sandro Continenza and Sergio Grieco gave the audience a second to consider the implications of the event, but they don’t.

The plot is reminiscent of “The Dirty Dozen.” A ragtag group of soldiers who are about to be court martialed are being transported to either prison or the gallows. But unlike “The Dirty Dozen” they aren’t recruited for a mission that would, if completed, gain them salvation. Their convoy is attacked by the Germans on the way to the clink and everyone guarding them is killed. The bad-boy soldiers escape and they take it upon themselves to join the war again.

Their ultimate challenge comes about solely due to the turnabout with Sachs, the German soldier that was captured by the Americans and who joined their group.

The film isn’t as delirious as one would hope it to be. It’s a fairly conventional actioner, with few of the lurid touches you’d get in a real whacked out European film by someone like Jesus Franco. The cinematography (by Giovanni Bergamini) is solid, and the acting is uniformly lacking. It’s shot in the typical way of a film that was always meant to be dubbed, with the camera moving away from faces as they speak so the audience wouldn’t get too caught up in the idea that the mouth wasn’t forming the words you actually hear.

The only adjective I can find for the special effects is “cute” -- the destroyed buildings and bridges and trains are straight out of tiny-town -- miniature recreations that look small despite the best effort to disguise them. But the production also features real tanks and trains and jeeps, which is nice and retro.

There is also a very mini Steve McQueen-like motorcycle jump that is, well, cute.

The climax features a runaway train and a secret German weapon that must be deactivated. None of the plans laid out by the Bastards goes particularly well.

The cast includes the rock-like Bo Svenson, Fred Williamson and an actor named Peter Hooten who supplies, improbably, the only love interest the film has.

A genuine curiosity is the Americanized name of the film. In one of the odd and mysterious ways that language sometimes works, the two perjorative words in the title -- “inglorious” and “bastards” -- somehow, when taken together, conjure up an image of heroism, which is exactly what the film meant to convey. That may be coolest thing about it.

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The Ken Burns Effect: Can't We Get a Joke Once In A While?

By Lars Trodson

I tried. I really, really tried to watch Ken Burns' latest documentary on PBS. But I can't. I'm all for being serious, but over 12 hours I need to laugh -- I'll even take a chuckle -- once in a while.

Ken Burns is a beautiful filmmaker and an undeniably articulate writer. There's no question. But ever since I was introduced to him through "The Civil War" series years ago, and then through "Baseball", and "Jazz" (and others) and now with "The National Parks: America's Best Idea", I have more frequently begun to ask myself why the guy has to take everything so seriously. Not everything in life is weighted with meaning and metaphor and deep insight into the human condition.

I understand completely that there is nothing funny about war, which Burns has examined twice, but -- and thank goodness for it -- funny things do happen in wartime. Even when life seems to be crushingly horrific, funny things can happen. But not in a Ken Burns documentary.

I happen to think baseball is one of the most whimsical and fleet-footed of all games, but not according to Burns. It was only frought with money and race and labor issues. I loved a lot of that series, but I thought: Couldn't he have devoted a half hour one night to some funny stuff?

How about jazz? Jazz can be humorous, lyrical, light - but can you name me three moments of downright laugh out loud moments in Burns' "Jazz?" Why not? Has nothing funny happened in the jazz world in the past 90 years? Was Jack Johnson's life all misery and pain and controversy?

I'm not sure that the National Parks systems is the best subject to begin turning on the laughtrack, but there must be something in that history to lighten the load. I'm going to give the series another go, and maybe I'm wrong. But so far it has been the same approach as before -- stunningly beautiful pictures and archival footage, voiceover narration by Tom Hanks, and the plink-plink of folk music in the background as we are tutored. So I'm having a hard time of it.

Ken Burns is almost certainly on to another project. I applaud him, and look forward to whatever he has to say next. But as he's writing his next script, I only ask him to take a moment and try to give his audience a break from the sobriety of life, and remember that there can be a telling detail about America and her history wrapped inside a good old-fashioned joke.

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