Six Takes

As a follow-up to my previous Alien Resurrection post, let me report that I am sitting here listening to the director's audio commentary. (Don't worry that I'm wasting my time. I'm multitasking. I'm also reading blogs.) And apparently the shot was real. As Jean-Pierre Jeunet puts it: "Seegournay Wayver, you know, vaz so proud, to do evryzing hairself, she vanted absolutely to put ze ball inside ze basketball wizzout ze special effects. And I vas vary warried about zat because, OK, ve are going to make ze 200 takes." As the digital guy then explains, a little more clearly: "This shot was supposed to be digital, of course, because what Jean-Pierre wanted was to make an impossible throw. And Sigourney did it for real." How many takes? Six takes. So now you know. And: "I feel that something was weird in her eyes. And she made it." So take that, David "We're not even sure now whether a movie star is walking, talking or giving us the eye all on her own" Thomson.

But it's still completely silly to call your DVD collection the Alien Quadrilogy. Honestly.

Oh, and I listened to Ridley Scott's audio commentary for the original Alien a couple nights ago. Did you know that in the scene in which Ash [Ian Holm - it turns out he's a robot] dissects the facehugger, it's just a plastic model with a very large oyster floating on top. No kidding. Just look at it. It's an oyster he's prodding. Fascinating stuff.

Award for the least insightful comment goes to the castmember whose chest exploded in the movie: "Hello, my name is John Hurt, I play Kane - Oh, here we are."

Ridley Scott on building the interiors of the Nostromo: "So here we are inside our retroindustrial corridors, which were fundamentally made up of remains of aircraft we found in aircraft graveyards. None of the things we could really afford - vacuum molding or presses or anything like that. Therefore a lot of the stuff was found and then assembled like sculpture and then painted and then joined together with nicely designed door architraves and polystyrene and sprayed to look like plastic. I was very conscious of the set and the condition of the set and whether it'd look aged enough."

But this line pretty much sums it up: "If you think about it carefully it doesn't make sense, but I think we got away with it."

On the whole, much higher quality audio commentary than I got listening to the Val Kilmer commentary on Spartan. I was trying to figure out what went wrong. I transcribed this bit; it seemed odd.

Val: [On David Mamet] His precision requires a kind of concentration where there's a very particular rhythm, like poetry. When a good actor reads poetry, you're not really aware of the scanning, you're more involved with the rhythm that the author intends, and the ideas that it promotes. And that's David's style. He writes in a lot of particular and sometimes complicated rhythms. It's why it's so frustrating when he cuts some of the good stuff. Messes up his own rhythm. I don't understand it. Except that I know he needs help.

Some of the poetry in question. (Sigh. What's happened to Mamet that he is churning out this dreck?)

Scott : What they gotcha teachin' here, young sergeant?
Jackie : Edged weapons, sir. Knife fighting.
Scott : Don't you teach 'em knife fighting. Teach 'em to kill. That way, they meet some sonofabitch who studied knife fighting, they send his soul to hell.

Scott : You're gonna leave your life or you're gonna leave the information in this room.

Scott : In the city there is always a refelection, in the woods always a sound.
Curtis : What about the desert?
Scott : You don't wanna go to the desert.

Scott : You wanted to go through the looking glass. How was it? Was it more fun than miniature golf?

More from Val Kilmer (on Scott, his rough, tough character):

There's a kind of poise to these guys that's really inspiring. And they go from what feels almost like a monk kind of neutral, and there's nothing going on in their mind, and they go from this sort of state of peace to 110 miles an hour, in an hour. And they're moving so fast with these actions it's hard to describe the action because I don't want to give away the story as we're watching. Maybe this is the second time you've seen it. If you're listening to this and you're watching the film for the first time - you're really strange.

And, again on Mamet's peculiarities:

He's also a fantastic liar. If he doesn't have the answer, he just vamps better than anyone. Oh, sure blah blah blah and then all of a sudden it's an hour later and you're doing the lines that he wrote and he didn't change and somehow he got you thinkin' it was OK and it all made sense but he, I'm pretty convinced, takes a lot of this from his children. I'm pretty sure he goes home and goes through a lot of the story - I know for sure with his daughter, and she's brilliant - and - he's a thief. And that's really the vamping because he doesn't know if it's past her bedtime; like this scene took place over several nights in Boston. And she was asleep. And so David got confused and exposed - the, uh, hack.

Isn't that interesting? I, for one, am glad someone put a microphone in front of Val Kilmer and just let him semi-ironically free-associate and meander for 90 minutes. I love DVD audio commentaries. I put them on in the background and only tune in when something interesting happens. I even listened to the first 10 minutes of the director's commentary on American Pie 2 before I came to my senses. (I think I was just so excited that Singapore has lightened up to the point where I can rent the unrated version at my local video store. Yes, I can. I wanted to experience all the joy.)

Some people don't seem to see it that way. But I think they're wrong. What do you think? I do admit that the commentaries that exist are often substandard and uncritical of the movies in question. Just chat and gossip. Which is fine, up to a point. But there could be so much more. Ebert's audio commentary for Dark City is very good, for example. But I am very glad that the ones we have exist. On average, each 90 minute stretch of inconsequential babble contains some nugget I would wish to have preserved for posterity. So it's like documentary footage.

It seems this is the sort of thing that someone could produce freelance, if they had smart thoughts. An MP3 that you play along with the movie, containing worthwhile reflections, etc. etc. At the very least there ought to be a crop of home-brew "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" MP3's, containing mercilessly snarky criticism. Shouldn't there?

Oh, I like this scene. I think I'll stop typing now.

Comments

[Kip Manley]

It seems this is the sort of thing that someone could produce freelance, if they had smart thoughts. An MP3 that you play along with the movie, containing worthwhile reflections, etc. etc.

Ebert was really big on pushing this idea a while back. People doing their own commentaries and P2Ping them as MP3s. I have no idea what became of it, though.

[Gary Farber]

What became of it is that you can find such independent commentaries offered all over the Internet. Ditto people making and offering their own re-cuts of movies, or their own re-dubbings.

It's quite popular. It will on become more so. (And I will look back and say, ha, ha, I pointed this out to you, John Holbo, because I am a Cool Cat, so there!)

I'm too dizzy from some medication to feel like Googling to find some links for you, but I know you'all can google for yourselves.

Making one's own Buffy music videos is a whole genre, by the way.

[Gary Farber]

What became of it is that you can find such independent commentaries offered all over the Internet. Ditto people making and offering their own re-cuts of movies, or their own re-dubbings.

It's quite popular. It will on become more so. (And I will look back and say, ha, ha, I pointed this out to you, John Holbo, because I am a Cool Cat, so there!)

I'm too dizzy from some medication to feel like Googling to find some links for you, but I know you'all can google for yourselves.

Making one's own Buffy music videos is a whole genre, by the way.

[Keith]

I'm a bit of a comentary addict myself. If you're looking for some really fantastic comentarys, I recommend Shadow of the Vampire and Titus for all out thourough exposition and thematic discussion and of course, Lord of the Rings for the dork in all of us. Fellowship is great because you can listen to Cristopher Lee wax poetic about Tolkien contextually. Lee apparently has read LOTR once a year since the books were first published and to hear him casually quote lengthy passages that correspond to the filmic scenes is like having the coolest, creepiest Tolkien Scholar sitting there beside you.

[jholbo]

Gary, you have opened my eyes to a Brave New World. Keith, thanks for the Titus recommendation. I own the disc. Now I'll listen to the audio. (I take it you refer to the Shakespeare Anthony Hopkins vehicle of a few years back.)

[chun the unavoidable]

I'd recommend the audio on John Wesley Harding. Does he really rhyme "moon" and "spoon" at one point?

[jholbo]

Chun, you're back! And you haven't changed a bit! (It's nice to know some mockingbirds never sail away.)

[noctos]

Best audio commentary that I've heard up till now: Roy Andersson on the fabulous amazing Songs From The Second Floor.

and Ridley Scott is idd quite ok at talking. Matchstick Men was pleasant listening (and watching).

[William S]

Also nice is the one for Star Trek: Wrath of Khan where he is explaining how difficult it is to do creative work because studio execs do not understand that sitting in a bathtub is working.

[Alvin Chong]

This should be it:
http://www.dvdtracks.com/

Lots more out there tho.

[jholbo]

Thanks, Alvin. (Is there anything the interweb won't do for me? I am constantly amazed at its wonders. No, seriously. I am.)

[Joe O]

When I am sick at home and don't have enough DVDs, I often watch the commentary track.

The commentary for "meet the parents" is particularly funny because everyone is solicitous of Robert De Niro and tries to get him to tell stories but he responds with yes or no answers.

[AustinDan]

MP3 of Wizard People, Dear Reader is available at http://www.illegal-art.org
A strange retelling of the Harry Potter saga by a man who A. has never seen the film before and B. is very drunk

I think there is a lot of potential for this sort of thing.

[Adam Kotsko]

We already have a perfectly good name for a four-part saga: Tetrology. I don't understand why people think that we need to make up a new one based on a supposed analogy with "trilogy." ("Tetrology" has the added advantage of evoking memories of the game Tetris.)

Another possibility: Call it "The Increasingly Inaptly Named Alien Trilogy."

[jam]

there's also "quartet" - but it just sounds weird: Alien Quartet ...?

sounds like Bach after a first encounter...

[spacetoast]

A while ago I read Noel Carrol's "Philosophy of Mass Art." I didn't think its arguments were especially sensitive to the questions it took up, but I do think that that Boston Globe bastard should be clubbed over the head with it.

As for commentaries, I find the commentaries that come along with horror movies most interesting, as a category. I think that genre, and maybe the people who work in that genre, is just especially conducive to interesting DVD commentaries. The commentary on Texas Chainsaw is fascinating. Gunnar Hansen talks about how, due to some error with the wardrobe, he had to wear the same single Leatherface costume during the entire shoot, which he stunk up pretty bad in that Texas heat, and so he was completely ostracized by the cast and crew because he smelled so bad and things like that...nobody would eat with him or talk with him, and he sort of makes a sort of Stanislavski device of it, it seems. Actually cutting Marylin Burns's hand, etc. Kind of scary. Plus, people were barfing on the set from the heat.

Besides the shooting-annecdote style of commentary, I also like Wes Craven's commentary on Nightmare on Elm Street. Nothing is wasted in that movie, and it's kind of gratifying to see him draw that out.