Take One (Sep-Oct 1972)

OO a a News Pane The truth 24 times per second. Oliver Reed and Ken Russell had words on the set of The Hot-Cold War Man and Russell (who directed Reed in Women in Love and The Devils) is no longer directing the picture. (But he is set to direct a film version of the rock-opera Tommy.) Because William Friedkin’s The Exorcist was brought in at almost double the original $5 million budget, moviegoers are being asked to ante up 50 cents more per admission to the film. Among the items that apparently jacked up the cost of the film: Friedkin’s decision not to use a score by Lalo Schifrin (after Schifrin had been paid in full) and a breath-making machine that kept choking up. Saul Bass recently told a reporter from London’s Sunday Times that he was tired of Alfred Hitchcock taking the credit for having directed the famous shower scene in Psycho. Bass, who created the title sequences for such films as Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, and Walk on the Wild Side (and who has just completed his first feature, starring a race of super-ants, called Phase IV), said: ‘‘When the film came out, everyone went wild about the shower-bath murder which I’d done, almost literally shot by shot, from my story-board. And then Hitchcock had second thoughts. In the book with Truffaut he says that I directed the sequence because he was ill on that day, but that after he saw it he hated it and directed it himself all over again. I hate to say this, but that story’s not true. The man’s a genius. But why should a genius get away with being so greedy?’ For a couple of years now, the film department at The University of Texas has been publishing a series of well-researched, intelligently-written programme notes on a rapidly-expanding list of screen classics. Now, they tell us, they’re interested in seeing their CinemaTexas Program Notes get into the hands of as many film students and teachers as possible. A subscription is free, and may be had by writing to Ron Policy, Director, CinemaTexas, Department of Radio/TV/ Film, School of Communication, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712 (512-471-7091). Tell ’em we sent you. Several years ago, a small town in Brittany became infested with rats. The mayor decided that the cheapest way to get rid of them was to offer a free seat in the local movie house for each rat tail produced at the box office. The ploy turned out to be so successful, however, that some of the kids started breeding their own rats in order to be sure of their weekly seat at the movies, and the mayor (complaining that there were more rats in town than ever and nobody was paying to get into the movies any more) called in professional rat killers. There’s probably a moral in that story somewhere. Several of the big-time U.S. 16mm film distributors have gotten together and formed a Non Theatrical Film Distributors Association which — among other things — will be publicizing the use of 16mm films, investigating copyright infringements, and setting up regional film libraries. Watch this space for more details as they come into focus. Word has come, through the Tricontinental Film Center in New York, of the imprisonment — by the new junta — of Chilean actor Marcelo Romo and director Guillermo Cahn. Romo, 32, and star of (among many films) The Jackal of Nahueltoro, has been held incommunicado since November 12th. Cahn, 27 and married, is a documentary-director and prominent organizer of the Chilean filmmaking movement. He has been held since November 23rd. Letters and telegrams, directed to the Chilean Embassy in Washington or Ottawa or to General Oscar Bonilla, Ministerio del Interior, Santiago de Chile, will be of real help in preventing the execution and further torture of both men. Follow up: Billy Jack (see the non-interview with Tom Laughlin in Vol. 3 No. 11) continues to make cinema history (as they say). The picture was first released in 1971 (by Warner Bros.), when it grossed about $30 million. Then there was a falling-out between producers Taylor and Laughlin and distributor Warners’. With that finally patched up, Taylor-Laughlin and Warners’ — late last year — combined forces and took what the industry felt was an incredible risk. They rented 389 theatres (total cost $1,100,000 per week) and spent a fortune on television advertising (estimated at $750,000 per week). Result: An unheard-of box-office gross (in four cities only) of $3.5 million the first week. By the second week, grosses totalled close to $6 million, and an awful lot of depressed industry-members had been taught a lesson in movie merchandising — and nerve. Since 1966, sales of audio-visual materials have risen 82 per cent in the States, while textbook sales have gone up only 23 per cent. Columnists Igor Cassini and Liz Smith: ‘‘Here’s one we loved: A French hostess patted Orson Welles’ stomach at a party and observed: ‘If that was on a girl, we would know what to think.’ Welles replied, ‘Madame, it was, an hour ago, so what do you think?’ ”’ So many women are copying Ali MacGraw’s long, natural hair style (reports Advertising Age) that Gillette’s hair spray, creme rinse, and setting gel products are losing ground to shampoos that aid and abet the straight look. Gillette’s 1973 earnings were considered such a disappointment by investment analysts that the company’s stock went from a year high of 66 to a recent low of 46. According to a recent Gallup Poll, some 38% of all Canadians, aged 18-29, find today’s feature films ‘‘more interesting’’ than those of five years ago, while only 7% of those past 50 agree. Men attend films oftener than women (13% of the men answering, but only 7% of the women, had seen a film in the week previous). Over-all, 10% of those polled had seen a movie in the past week, but 86% of those aged 50 and up either hadn’t seen a movie for a month or couldn’t remember the last time they had. Production Notes from All Over: Woody Allen has a four-picture deal with United Artists. ... Rod Steiger and Henry Fonda are set to star in Carlo Lizzani’s Last Four Days of Mussolini (guess which one’s got the title role). Lizzani has also announced that he will follow with a film of Sidney Gordon’s novel, Dr. Norman Bethune.... Roger Corman’s New World Pictures has announced five 1974 releases: a rock musical comedy called Rock and Roll is Dead; a horror film, The Grave is Alive; A Bullet for Every American; a tale about an avalanche called, for some reason, Avalanche; and a screen adaptation of the Herman Melville novel The Confidence Man, adapted and to be ditected by one-time Take One contributor Jonathan Demme, and starring Orson Welles in the title role.... In France, meanwhile, Louis Malle has completed a film, called Lucien, about a young man, working for the Gestapo, who gets to know a Jewish family; Alain Robbe-Grillet, too, has finished a feature, Déplacements progressifs du plaisir (about an imprisoned young woman and her guilt or innocence). Francisco Arrabal’s latest feature, J’irai comme un cheval fou (a criminal on the run meets a man who can create day or night at will), has met with a fair amount of box-office success, but nothing like The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (Louis de Funés plays a anti-Semite who has to disguise himself as a rabbi to flee a gang of terrorists), which looks like it will break the record set by Last Tango of 1.4 million admissions in Paris alone.... Liv Ullman, having completed her Queen Christina role in The Abdication, is now set to star in a remake of Anna Christie — to be written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. . . . Mick Jagger’s wife Bianca has signed to make her movie acting debut in Twiggy’s Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance. And talking about debuts, Francis Ford Coppola has set Roger Corman to play a US Senator in The Godfather: Part II sequel (Corman gave Coppola his first directorial break on Dementia 13). And talking about directors acting, John Huston has been signed to play Faye Dunaway’s father in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.... And, finally, AIP’s next horror pic is to be The Day the Dogs Ran, described thusly by a company press release: “‘The story concerns a pack of vicious dogs which first attack Hollywood filmmakers and then go after members of the human race.”’