American cinematographer (Nov 1921-Jan 1922)

November 1, 1921 Page Eleven Jimmy the oAssistant DIRECTORS Directors is one of the biggest and most important wheels in the movie machine. Directors is to the movie plant what gasoline is to an auto. A good organization with a bum director is like a $10,000 gas-hack burning coal oil. And versa-visa, a good director with a bum company is like running an 1876 tiivver with drug store gas hopped up with ether. It may blow hell out of the motor, but it sure perambulates while it lasts. The evolution of directors has evolved considerable since I first busted in. First place I ever was at was a dinky little hole way over on the East Side in New York, where you climbed over a lot of dago kids to get into the studio. The director was a fat guy in shirt sleeves, who probably held at that time the all-American perspiring record, and he sounded like a swearing instructor demonstrating some new ones. He was swearing because the camera had ran out of film and an actor had moved. In them days, when the film ran out, everybody held still while the cameraman reloaded, and then continued the scene. How times has changed. Nowadays, when the film runs out, it ain't the actors that gets cussed out. Seemed like the director's pet idea at that time was to save film. Action was boiled down to the shortest possible footage. It was not "how good," but "how short." Actors just natcherally developed into sprinters. Directors almost had to be hard boiled. Their work was more like football coaching than anything else. It took a lot of razzing to get the necessary speed out of the actors. But then, everything else was the same way. Frinstance, the negative which we today treat like it was a consumptive baby with a busted back, they then used to handle like they had 278 duplicates of it. After the negative man had done all the dirt he could they used to take it down in the cellar and project it at double speed on a worn-out projector that they couldn't use in theaters on account of it chewing the film all up. But them days is gone, and so has the case-hardened director. The successful director of today is a artist, business man, diplomat, fighter, dramatist, writer, for the most part, and a student of almost eve^y other snort, profession, trade, and art in the world. These qualities is mixed in various ways, and that's why we have so many different kinds of directors. I've worked with about five or six of the best known types. The first one was of the oldfashioned blood and iron school. He had a fight on his hands every two minutes, and his favorite saying was: "Shut up; I'm the boss here!" He got along fine as long as he handled Manhattan cowboys, but later on, when stars begun to appear, they give him a temperamental stage beautv, and the first time he opened up she had him fired. That was the last I ever saw of him. The rest of his type met the same fate as far as I can find out. Then I got hooked up with a stage director who was taking a whack at the movies during an off season in the stage business. He used to rehearse for hours to get just the right inflexshun to the snoken titles and played most exerything in long shots. It took about nine hours to look at a reel of his stuff, it was so slow. No jazz nor pep, nor nothing. The first picture he made was a light little frothy thing about a idiot who goes crazy, wrote by CHICAGO LOS ANGELES RothackerAller Laboratories Inc. Watterson R. Rothacker President Joseph Aller Vice-President and General Manager Los Angeles Office 5515 Melrose Ave. Hollywood 6065 NEW YORK LONDON