The legendary Harvey Weinstein has had his share of run-ins with filmmakers, usually on final cut, but the letter below where he admonishes doc filmmaker Errol Morris for being "boring" and to be more of saleman, is funny indeed

MIRAMAX FILMS

August 23, 1988

Errol Morris
c/o The Mondrian Hotel
8440 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

Dear Errol:

Heard your NPR interview and you were boring. You couldn't have dragged me to see THE THIN BLUE LINE if my life depended on it.

It's time you start being a performer and understand the media.

Let's rehearse:

Q: What is this movie about?

A: It's a mystery that traces an injustice. It's scarier than NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. It's like a trip to the Twilight Zone. People have compared it to IN COLD BLOOD with humor.

Speak in short one sentence answers and don't go on with all the legalese. Talk about the movie as a movie and the effect it will have on the audience from an emotional point of view.

If you continue to be boring, I will hire an actor in New York to pretend that he's Errol Morris. If you have any casting suggestions, I'd appreciate that.

Keep it short and keep selling it because that's what's going to work for you, your career and the film.

Congratulations on all your good reviews. Let's make sure the movie is as successful.

Best Regards,

(Signed)

Harvey Weinstein

The movie went on to win awards and $$$$ for the Weinstein Co or Miramax as it was called at the time. (via Letters of Note)

The last eight, nine years of my life have been a mess," he said. "Maybe the last two have been a little better. Less rolling in the trough of the wave. Have you ever been analysed? I was afraid of it at first. Afraid it might destroy the impulses that made me creative, an artist. A sensitive person receives 50 impressions where somebody else may only get seven. Sensitive people are so vulnerable; the more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalised, develop scabs. Never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel too much. Analysis helps. It helped me. But still, the last eight, nine years I've been pretty mixed up ..."

Ever wonder who the faceless drones are who help bring you-yes, you the living-the mass entertainment you so wantonly crave are? Me neither..well, occasionally

Name Redacted] came from humble beginnings, a small town outside of [City Redacted]. After graduating from college, [Name Redacted] moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in entertainment. He/She first landed a job at [Agency Name Redacted], working for an agent with a penchant for throwing phones. Or better put, this agent had a penchant for throwing phones at [Name Redacted]. Rather than play "face catch," [Name Redacted] took a job at a competing agency. It is during that time that our winner stole the title of "The Miracle Worker" from Helen Keller and never gave it back.

Funny stuff at The Hollywood Temp.

What movies have made men cry? CTV.ca has a list. The scene between Robert DiNero's slave trader and the Brazilian Indians as he is forgiven for his crimes in The Mission comes to mind. How about you? What movies have choked you up? Not the Usual Suspects like E.T. or Old Yeller but ones that might not readily come to mind.

Showgirls maybe?

Check out Mr. Redcarpet's latest post.   Get a Holiday greeting and some Tinsel (not the kind on the tree) Town  trivia.

Sidney Grauman is The Man when it comes to seminal and spectacular Hollywood movie theatres. After moving from Frisco where he entertained thousands showing movies in a circus tent only days after the 1906 earthquake, Grauman first opened the Million Dollar Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith were only a few of the many early Hollywood illuminaries who turned out for the opening.

Even before The Witches of Eastwick, A Few Good Men and Batman, Jack got his footprints.
Guess they knew somethin then.

 I just finsihed watching The Maltese Falcon for the 4th or 5th time. As always it was fun to see the well-written film play out it's complicated moral ambiguity. I was stuck in Hong Kong in the nineties, waiting for a legitimate visa to work in Korea as an ESL teacher. Hong Kong costing what it does, I had to find a way to past the time on the cheap. Enter a brusied and battered copy of the collected works of Dashiell Hammett. It kept me for near a week till the visa finally came through.

Mark Coggins has put together a little photo/essay montage of the apartment in San Fran, CA. where Hammett wrote the adventures of the Continental Detective and one Mr. Sam Spade. Enjoy.

 Douglas Kirkland captured some of the most interesting shots of Hollywood during the 60 and 70's, like this one of actor Michael Caine. Go here to see many others like Audrey Hepburn, Jack Nicholson, Ann Margaret, Farrah Fawcett, Brigett Bardot, and many others. Haunting and Nostalgic, Kirkland seemed to capture something that hid just beneath the eyes, the skin.

"A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.

Every director bites the hand that lays the golden egg.

Give me a couple of years, and I'll make that actress an overnight success.

God makes stars. I just produce them.

I read part of it all the way through.

Let's have some new cliches.

Television has raised writing to a new low."

Gosh they don't make them like him anymore in Hollywood. Now it's all Wall Street jargon.

(Thanks Ross!)

One is LC's film hero, the other a writing hero. What happened when they met to discuss Keaton starring in a film by Beckett that only had one spoken line ("Shhh")?:

Beckett arrived at Keaton's hotel, to find him watching a baseball game and drinking beer. Cronin takes up the story: 'Beckett, finding himself in the unusual position of having to make the running, ventured a few general words about his admiration for Keaton's work. When these petered out, everybody sat in silence while Keaton, seemingly unperturbed - though because of his famous mask, nobody could be sure - continued to drink his beer and watch the game. Every now and then Beckett, almost like somebody meeting Samuel Beckett for the first time, would venture a few words, to which Keaton would respond at best in monosyllables.' In a sentence that could easily pass for a stage direction from a Beckett play, Cronin concludes: 'The minutes passed, the situation seemed to get more harrowing and hopeless and the silences to become more interminable.'

He did make the film called "Film" and it was openly booed. My admiration has jumped ten-fold, fellows. (via The Guardian)

You don't have to always look like an A-List Star or opt for the usuall path to said stardom. How about Francine? Francine's way:

Francine Dancer is one of Hollywood’s most famous public access TV personalities but she’s not your typical Hollywood celebrity. She doesn’t take a limo to the studio, she uses a wheelchair. She doesn’t live in the Hollywood Hills, she lives on the streets of Hollywood. She doesn’t dine at Spago, she can be found at free church dinners. These setbacks don’t stop her from producing her weekly variety show.

THE FRANCINE DANCER VARIETY SHOW is a showcase for Francine’s talents as a bikini go-go dancer and musician. The show has been on the air for 8 years and Francine has filmed over 100 epsiodes.

Catch it.

First there was the Jewish Mafia and lately there was hushed talk of the dreaded Gay Mafia. In between was there an Irish Mafia in Hollywood? When the members were grilled about it, they said they had no recollection due to the inordinate amount of alcohol consumed at the meetings and if there was talk of someone being whacked, it would more than likely have been Flann the barkeep for running out of Irish Dew. Let Cagney deny it:

"So much blarney has been written about Hollywood's Irish Mafia that a few words on the subject would seem salutary. There was a period in the early 1940's when Pat O'Brien, Frank McHugh, Ralph Bellamy, Spencer Tracy, Lynne Overman, Frank Morgan, and I would get together once a week, have dinner, and make the talk. That's all there was to it. Simply go into the week's happenings, and if there was a story to be told, or jokes to be let loose, that was the place and that was the time. Laughter and fun among some old friends, nothing more. But Hollywood being what it is--that flatulent cave of the winds, John Barrymore called it--all kinds of ridiculous connotations were put on our little get-togethers.

Peggy Archer, Pro Grip and Filmmaker, memes LA. I would but no time. Check it out.

 Suaire de Mondo Cane by Yves Klein, was comissioned by one of the early 'shockumenatry' Italian Filmmaking duos, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, for their 1962 film Mondo Cane.

Klien's method was to let beautiful women bathe in ultramarine blue paint and then have these human brushes produce body prints as it was filmed. He was a very spiritual person and was later shocked to see his work depicted in the film in such a horrible manner and after the premier, soon died of a heart attack. Great Poster but an even more beautiful painting. The film is available on ebay and I believe Amazon. Via the excellent BitterCinema

Before the projector became the means for film viewing, there was the Mutoscope.

Herman Casler, an American, invented this contraption in 1894. After dropping some coin in the slot and gazing inside (much like with the late 70s View-Master) a series of cards with pictures of a moving subject could be seen. A handle was turned which flipped the cards and made the subject appear to move.

Many of the early cards were of the mildly sexual variety. Women undressing, for example, was a popular theme ("By jove, that's an excellent corset"). Because of their proclivity for sporting a peeping Tom-like character, many Mutoscopes began to bare the inscription: "what the butler saw". Sometimes they were referred all together as "what the butler saw" machines.

Check out http//:www.filmsite.org/pre20sintro.html for more info                                            
 










              

The French are responsible for the first special effect. But if it's any consolation, you fans of "freedom" fries, it was a complete accident.


It was the 1890s in Paris and early filmmaker Georges Melies was capturing: traffic. His personal narration may have gone somezing like this (please supply your own faux-accent): 
Ze horses trudge by. Zeir dung produces a foul stench in ze air. I take anozer deep drag hoping to occlude my nasal passages. I am dizzy and a song from my youth plays in my head. For a moment I escape from ze drudgeries of life.

As a bus passed by in front of Melies' camera, the camera jammed. Once he got it working again, a hearse passed by.  When Melies developed the film he found that it appeared as if  the bus turned into the hearse. Viola- the first special effect.

Did you know that the elephants at the Hollywood/Highland complex were modelled after those built for the set of D.W. Griffith's 1916 film "Intolerance"? In fact those OEs (that's original elephants) stood for eight years along Sunset Blvd right where the Vista Theatre is located now. "Intolerance", the most expensive film of its time, employed 60,000 people! It flopped, and the elephants were demolished years later as they posed quite the fire hazard.