BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:FILM #15

FILM AS A RELIGION

“A Roman Catholic kid of my acquaintance, on his 
first trip to the cinema, paused to genuflect in
 the aisle before taking his seat. A perfectly 
understandable mistake.”

Anthony Lane. “The Coming Passions” in The New Yorker 
(November 21, 2022)

**
OF MOVIES & EROS

“when I was fifteen, I remember watching Carnal 
Knowledge at the Grand movie theater in Northfield, 
Minnesota, my hometown. Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret 
were locked in a mystifying upright embrace and were 
crashing around the room with their clothes on, or 
most of them on, banging into walls and making a 
lot of noise, and I had no idea what they were doing. 
It had never occurred to me in my virginal state that 
people made love like that. A friend had to tell me 
what I was seeing. Most teenagers today are more 
sophisticated but only because they’ve had more 
exposure. I was thirteen before I  stumbled over 
the word rape –in Gone with the Wind. I walked 
downstairs and asked my mother what it meant.”

Siri Hustvedt. Yonder (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1998)

**


MOVIES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN OUR LIVES

“Well, does any movie make a difference? Yes, 
and I would be willing to say that a great movie 
comedy makes the greatest difference, after which 
would come a great poetic movie. Modern Times, 
for instance, and All Quiet on the Western Front.”

William Saroyan. Obituaries (Berkeley: Creative 
Arts Books, 1979)
**
SUSPENSE IN MOVIES

“By the way, Young and Innocent contains an 
illustration that suspense rule by which the 
audience is provided with information the 
characters in the picture don’t know about. 
Because of this knowledge, the tension is 
heightened as the audience tries to figure
 out what’s going to happen next.”

Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut, 
with the Collaboration of Helen G. Scott. 
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966)


ON MAKING DR. ZHIVAGO

“This movie was shot in Spain during the regime 
of General Francisco Franco. One day, while filming
 the scene with the crowd chanting the Marxist theme 
(at 3:00 a.m.), police showed up on set thinking a 
real revolution was taking place and insisted on 
staying until the scene was finished. The secret 
police supposedly surveyed the crowd as the extras 
sang the Internationale for a protest scene, so 
many extras pretended they didn't know the words.
 (Of course, the extras had been rehearsed in 
singing the Internationale before the scene was shot.) Meanwhile, residents who lived nearby had awoken to 
the singing of the Internationale and mistakenly 
concluded that Franco had died (or been overthrown). 
Some residents even popped champagne bottles at 
the mistaken rumor.

IDMb Trivia
**
"I don’t have the immediacy of personality. I’m not
a true eccentric. I’ve got both feet planted in 
Shaker Heights."
     
Paul Newman
**

NAUGHTY BURKE (Because of the Murderer William Burke?)

“Columbia Pictures planned a movie with the name ‘Burke’ 
in the title. The Will Hayes Office censors rushed a 
memo to the producers informing that the name ‘Burke’ 
could not be used in England ‘Burke’ means something
 naughty.
  “To which the reply was ‘What about Burke’s Peerage?’”

Walter Winchell. Winchell Exclusive (Englewood Cliffs, 
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975)

&&
007 IS NOT AN ACTION NUMBER
“Please understand: James Bond is not an action hero!
 He is too good for that. He is an attitude. Violence 
for him is an annoyance. He exists for the foreplay 
and the cigarette. He rarely encounters a truly evil 
villain. More often a comic opera buffoon with 
hired goons in matching jump suits.”

Roger Ebert, reviewing Quantum of Solace (Nov. 8, 2008)
**
HOW SOME FILMS BEGIN

“A film for me begins with very vague—a chance remark
 or a bit of conversation, a hazy but agreeable event 
unrelated to any particular situation. It can be a 
few bars of music, a shaft of light across the street. 
Sometimes in my work at the theater I have envisioned 
actors made up for yet unplayed roles.”

Ingmar Bergman. Introduction to Four Screenplays 
of Ingmar Bergman (New York :Simon & Schuster, 1960)

**
 SHORT SUBJECTS


MARK PEPLOE

‘Mark Peploe
Was one of the people
Who worked The Sheltering Sky.
As for myself, I wd  prefer to ski.


LANA TURNER

Turner, Lana.
When I talked with my Nana,
She sd: “To men, Turner is like cat-nip to a cat.
That’s that!”
  
IF MIA FARROW GOT LOST IN MIAMI AND HER 
DISAPPEARANCE  WAS REPORTED TO THE POLICE

Farrow, Mia
For a brief time was MIA
In Mia-
mi. Momma mia!

LJP