The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

May 12, 1928 THE FILM next man under him is an ass who can't be trusted to do his job properly. I have encountered no executive who was honest enough to confess that he did not know anything about pictures. I dare say you could go into the offices of a dozen United States Steel Corporation executives before finding one who would confess that he knew something about how steel was made, but you can not get through the gate of a motion picture studio without encountering half a dozen people who know all about picturemaking. This mistaken belief is a menace in proportion to the prominence of the positions of those who hold it. It is costing the film industry scores of millions of dollars a year because the big producers, as individuals, hold it. I believe that most of these big producers would reveal themselves as able executives if they would stick to their jobs as such and allow the author of a story to be the sole dictator of the length of the kiss when the druggist's wife falls into the arms of the night-watchman. Picture executives some day will do this. I hope they will be the present ones, for as a class they're a decent lot of fellows, but if they can not be made over, they will be supplanted by those who do not need making over, for they will understand from the first what kind of business they are in. * * * Perhaps We Might Obtain Better Pictures This Way A reformation of the film industry that would lead to greater profits and better pictures would be brought about automatically if the industry became conscious of what sort of a thing it is. If it realized its sole mission is to tell stories entertainingly on the screen, it first would discover what writers already connected with it could write such stories. Take Mr. Blank, producer. He would satisfy himself that Mr. Ink, author, had demonstrated his knowledge of writing for the screen. Blank would commission Ink to write the kind of story he knew Ink was qualified to write, and Blank would go back to his desk and attend to his other duties, with a couple of afternoons a week on the golf links. Some time later — how long would make no difference after sufficient writers were at work to keep abreast of production — Ink would hand in a story that would make a good picture because he, a talented and experienced screen writer, knew it would. Blank would accept it as readily as he would swallow a dose of medicine handed him by his doctor, and for the same reason: not because he knew anything about it, but because he had confidence in the man from whom he got it. Ink's perfect script would be accepted by the supervisor as a perfect piece of work, and he would select a director to shoot it as written. Here is where I get my first laugh from the industry. The idea of curbing the inspiration of a director! But that is exactly what I would do if I were Blank. I would hire Ink to provide the ideas and the director to shoot them, and would insist upon each man sticking to his job. Lige Magoffin, our poet's brother, (Hurrah! I've got my name in The Spectator! — E. H. M.) who puts in type what I write for The Spectator, is an intelligent fellow whose ideas are good, but if he ever began to inject his ideas into anything I write I would wrench the self-starter off his Mergenthaler and brain him with it. My job is to write the stuff and his is to put it in type, ignoring all the obvious opportunities to improve its quality. Ink's job would be to provide a per SPECTATOR Page Five feet script, and if he could not do this, it would be up to Blank to fire him and hire someone who could. The perfect script would eliminate the waste from production, for when it was followed fewer sets would be constructed and much less footage shot. And we would get a perfect picture, which would please the public to the extent that that kind of picture would give it pleasure. We now have perhaps a dozen, and always will have some, directors who can make valuable contributions to a story, and to achieve the best results they should be allowed to screen their stories in their own way. They are the men who will give us the big specials. The directors of the program pictures never should be allowed to have a voice in the construction of their stories, and the one who boasts that he throws away his script should be exiled from Hollywood. We do not arrive at this conclusion by reasoning only, nor by the contemplation of ideal conditions. We arrive at it directly by contemplating the pictures we are getting now, the ones the public declares are getting worse, but which I maintain simply are standing still. Any system that produces these unsatisfactory pictures must be changed if the future product is to be satisfactory. "Where are we to get our perfect stories?" is the constant plaint of producers. There are hundreds of writers who can be trained to turn them out, but such training will be fruitless until we have in the executive offices people who realize that they could not recognize the perfect story if they read it, and who will rely upon the judgment of those who know. The custom of turning over a story to the panhandling of a supervisor and a director who know nothing whatever about writing stories, is as idiotic as turning over the camera work to a property boy who knows nothing about lights. Jack Ford to the Front With Another Good One THREE in a row for Jack Ford — Mother Machree, Four Sons, and now Hangman's House. The first two are having Broadway runs, and they tell me that the other is merely a program picture, but Hangman's House is the best motion picture of the trio, although it will not come anywhere near taking in as much money as either of the other two. In Mother Machree and Four Sons Ford had a definite and "fat" theme to work on — sure-fire hokum of universal appeal. All he had to do to make us cry was to make his two mothers real. In Hangman's House he was faced with different material. There was no sure-fire stuff in the story. It primarily is a story of a great hate, and it revolves around a particularly nasty villain. Ford had in his hands just motion picture situations, without a tear-drop in them, with nothing to make us either laugh or cry. And Jack took these situations and has given us what I think is the finest program picture ever turned out by any studio. As the story is one without particular appeal, the merit in the production is due to its perfection as an example of motion picture art. This is a quality put into it by the director, and to which no one else could contribute. Often we praise directors for being responsible for originating bits of good business that undoubtedly were in the scripts, but in Hangman's House there are no good bits. I can not recall one little touch that is an outstanding piece of direction. The story is laid in Ireland, and Jack Ford took the Irish heart of