Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1962)

THE VIEWS DF A PROMINENT PRODUEER-DIREETOR Stanley Kramer Speaks Out The following interview with pro ducer-director Stanley Kramer, cov ering a wide range of current motion picture problems, was conducted by Donald McDonald, Dean-elect of the College of Journalism of Marquette University, for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. STANLEY KRAMER Q. Mr. Kramer, I think you once said that the reason you are directing as well as producing your own pictures is because you wanted to "preserve the integrity of your dream." What did you mean by that? KRAMER: The big difficulty in making a film is that it represents the work of many people. When I say "big difficulty," that is not to deprecate the contributions to the film made by members of the many artistic crafts. This difficulty is peculiar to the making of a motion picture itself. Because so many people do contribute to it, the final result is never exactly what the originator or the "dreamer" of the project envisioned. Q. You say this is peculiar to the motion picture? KRAMER: Yes. Contrast it to what happens in, say, a painting. A painter doesn't hang his painting until it is exactly as it was in his mind's eye. He can scrape it and change it and fix it until it is exactly as he saw it in his mind. Not so with a film. It is never exactly as you saw it because the musical conductor in his emphases and in the way he handles his orchestra, the writer in the writing of the dialogue itself, the cameraman in the lighting of the scene — all of these affect the film. By directing as well as producing a film, one can put across a good part of this and come closer to producing the film as it was originally conceived. Q. The ivhole implication here is that film-making is a creative process and, if it is, then the creator has to be in control of it from beginning to end. KRAMER: Many people in film-making are, in my opinion, doing a disservice by referring to it as an industry and by insisting that it is nothing but an industry. They have limited the area of the work; they have put an arbitrary ceiling on the effort. Film-making is creative, it is an art form. I think one of the difficulties in which we find ourselves today is that we have limited our range, our field of vision, and therefore we have limited the things we are willing to go after as subject-matter. As a consequence we have lost a good part of our audience. Q. Someone has described film-making as an "industry married to an art form." You cant' get away from the industrial aspect of it, can you; the economic necessities involved in making pi ins? KRAMER: No. You can get away from the industrial only by embracing it. I am for that love affair, the marriage of the art with the industry, as long as the art is the dominant and controlling partner in the marriage. Q. Since you have become a director of your own films, how well have you been able to control this creative process? KRAMER: I was always able to control it pretty well, but now I am controlling it more directly. How well? I would say not very well on some occasions, and as well as could be expected on others. I am limited by the range of my own abilities, which are hard to approximate and which certainly cannot be approximated by me. Q. I agree; it is like asking someone how "competent" he is. KRAMER: Yes. I really don't know. My excursions in my last four films provided, I hope, entertainment, excitement, and provocative comment. The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, On the Beach, and Judgment at Nuremberg are films that would have to be judged by others and perhaps at a later date. But I am convinced in my own mind that in no instance will they be dated with the passage of time. They are too much involved with large issues that will always be with us. Q. Do you have a philosophy of motion-picture making that would account for your making this kind of film? KRAMER: I have absolutely no philosophy on film-making. I think a phil osophy in itself suggests a definition of approach, and the worst possible thing in this work is to have a definition of approach. Right now I am doing a comedy. It was written by William Rose, who wrote Genevieve. It is a good change of pace. But I had never really considered that I would not do a comedy or a musical or any other kind of entertainment. It so happens that in these last few years I became involved with subject-matter in which there is a good deal of contention. Q. Perhaps motion pictures, like the theatre, have lost the universality, the treatment of universal themes, that could bring audiences back. Would you say a return to universality is essential to the come-back of the film? KRAMER: I don't know how anything is going to make its come-back. I don't know whether it really went away at all. It is possible for something to be slumbering and never to have left the premises. If it is slumber, I don't know what the awakening process is. But I do shy clear of definitions. I am afraid of them. They are in the same category as generalizations. The thing itself suffers from the very weight of its being defined. My feeling is that a film is an art form that it footloose and fancy free, that you take it as it comes, and if you feel emotionally it is going to make a piece of entertainment, that it is going to be an excitement, you go ahead and make it — without the definition. Q. You make, then, what pleases you and appeals to you rather than putting your ear to the ground and . . . KRAMER: Yes. Any creative person worth his salt does what pleases him ( Continued on Page 20) Page 8 Film BULLETIN April 30, 1942