Death to Videodrome

The following test screening results from Criterion's website suggest that audiences weren’t quite ready for David Cronenberg’s betamax odyssey in 1983:

One of the featured film essays on that same page - Medium Cruel Reflections on Videodrome by Tim Lucas - mentions an interesting visual component that was present in the script but didn’t make it into the final film: video twitches. After using the Accumicon helmet, Max was to shake “video dandruff” from his head. People and objects were to twitch video throughout the story, to be achieved by dropping the resolution down to 525-lines with an electric neon-like effect:


[Michael] Lennick and his associate Lee Wilson prepared a reel of assorted video twitches and glitches for Cronenberg — “Everything from a basic white-noise glitch to complex little flashes with flecks of subliminal material in them,” Lennick says — which he did like. “It wasn’t the quality of their effects, per se,” Cronenberg explains, “but I didn’t have to see the actual twitches in context to know that they would have disrupted the film’s pacing. They didn’t gel with the surrounding footage — that’s the main reason they were cut. Michael was very disappointed, but it wouldn’t be true to portray this as him and me being destroyed by budget restrictions. I’ve not regretted their loss either.
 

Their omission no doubt makes the film feel a lot less dated when viewed today. But it’s a shame that this test reel didn’t survive in some form, just to view what might have been.

One special feature present on the Criterion Blu-ray that’s a must watch is Fear On Film, a 26 minute round table discussion between Cronenberg, John Carpenter and John Landis that’s hosted by future filmmaker Mick Garris. This was in 1982 when all three were at the top of their game. Youtube has the piece in 2 parts.

Long live the new flesh.

Film, CronenbergDMcM
Going Postal

I recently stumbled upon a wonderful post-production podcast called Going Postal. Until this, my go-to editing podcast was The Terence and Philip Show by Terence Curren and Philip Hodgetts. Alas, the schedule on that show is somewhat erratic, evening out to approximately one a month, and it always leaves me wanting more. Going Postal fills that gap. It’s been running since May of this year with each episode covering a variety of topics from technology and software news, to interviews with film and television editors, to reviews of current movie releases.

Episode 5 of Going Postal ("Meet or Supermeet?") covers EditFest London 2013 and includes a few cutting room stories from Taxi Driver courtesy of Academy Award winning editor Tom Rolf.

On the "You talking to me?" scene:


"I had no idea it would take off and become a signature scene in this movie. Because when I saw the dailies, I said, “What do I do with this?” There is no reverse. There was no coverage. Essentially what you saw was almost every frame available to put together. So I had no option. And so when I put it together and showed it to Marty the first time, he went “Yeah, it works.” And I said, “What’s he talking about? It doesn’t work.” I felt no confidence in that scene."
 

He went on to speak about the repeat action from the same sequence:


"There’s a repeat. When he turns around. And then we go back and we do it again. That was Marty. That was not me. I said, “It’s going to look like a mistake, Marty.” Which, to me, it did look like a mistake. But it’s now part and parcel of the entire thing. That was strictly his contribution and it was a big one, obviously."
 

That repeat action was a huge deal for me when I first saw Taxi Driver. It was one of the first times I can remember becoming consciously aware of - and excited by - the power of film editing. It did look like a mistake. But not a mistake by the filmmakers. It looked like Travis Bickle’s mistake. In that moment, it felt like the character had taken control of the film itself.

There’s a nice write-up on EditFest’s conversation between Tom Rolf and Anne Coates here. And Premiumbeat offers a concise overview of the event with a few additional Tom Rolf quotes:


The most important talent to develop in the cutting room is diplomacy. Never hold anyone’s idea up to ridicule. Try anything and be ready to fight for what you think is right.
 

 

Film, Editing, Podcasts, ScorseseDMcM
Lynchian

I remember reading this David Foster Wallace article about the filming of Lost Highway [1997] prior to the film's release. His amusing definition of "Lynchian" has always stuck with me:


"AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively - i.e., we know it when we see it.
 
Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that badly cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not. A hideously bloody street fight over an insult would be a Lynchian street fight if and only if the insultee punctuates every kick and blow with an injunction not to say fucking anything if you can't say something fucking nice."
 
Lynch, FilmDMcM