The first 20 years of motion picture history had more in common with You Tube than Star Wars.The early films were often under a minute long and seldom over ten minutes. They featured animals, people kissing, people doing menial tasks—or just someone sneezing. Film was more of a novelty than business or an art form.
Like many You Tube producers the early filmmakers often were the director, the cameraman, the writer (if anything was written), the editor, and even the talent. The early movies were silent and black and white films (with occasional tinting). The earliest film scenes were a static one shot, but between 1895-1908 film shooting, editing and storytelling began to become more complex. Like You Tube the quality was all over the place, and like You Tube some filmmakers gathered a following.
And thankfully because of You Tube you can get a sweeping overview of film history in a little over 30 minutes.
Multiple still photographs of galloping horse (1878), Eadweard Muybridge
Fred Ott’s Sneaze (1884),William K.L. Dickson
Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895) Louis Lumiere
Life of an American Fireman (1903), Edwin S. Porter
Resuced by Rover (1905), Cecil Hepworth
The Black Hand (1906), Billy Blitzer
The first film made in Hollywood was In Old California(1910), a 17-minute film directed by D.W. Griffith. Charlie Chaplin called Griffith “The teacher of us all”— more on that giant of a filmmaker on Monday.
“Hollywood was established in 1853, with a single adobe hut on land outside Los Angeles, California. Growing crops was so successful there that by 1870, Hollywood became a thriving agricultural community.” History of Hollywood
Hollywood Hotel in 1910
In the early ’80s I remember driving north on the 101 freeway in Southern California, exiting at Santa Monica Blvd., turning left and driving into Hollywood for the first time. I was 21-years-old and not prepared for what I saw.
Sure the sun was shinning, but all it did was expose a town well past its glamorous prime. Buildings seemed ready to fall, while groups of shirtless young male prostitutes stood on corners waiting for rides. (Fresh from Florida the whole concept of “Chickens” had to be explained to me by someone at film school.) The glory had departed. (Rent Pretty Woman to get a glimpse of that era of Hollywood.)
But just as there was a time after Hollywood’s Golden Era, there was a time before Hollywood was really Hollywood.
The early films in the late 1800s and early 1900s were shot mostly in New York, New Jersey, Chicago or in Europe. Hollywood, California at the turn of the 20th Century was a five day train ride from New York. Not ideal for actors coming from New York—especially since movies were not only in the shadow of Broadway, but were short little films meant to be cheap entertainment shown in storefront theaters to working class people—many who were immigrants.
But the perception of Hollywood—and the movies—would change over time.
“Why Hollywood? The Pioneers were drawn to Southern California by the promise of cheap labor, spectacular locations, and a benign climate…The pioneers were a tough breed, unfazed by physical hardship, rattlesnakes, and gun-toting rivals.
Crude studios and outdoor sets were thrown up over a 300-square-mile area from 1908 on. Hollywood—then a bucolic settlement of 5,000—became the principle focus. It was conveniently close to the hills and to downtown L.A., but its first settlers—staid Midwesterners who had outlawed saloons and theaters—were unfriendly. Recalled pioneer director Allan Dwan: ‘We were beneath them. If we walked in the streets with out cameras, they hid their girls under their beds, closed doors and windows, and shied away.’ ‘No dogs, no actors,’ read a sign at the Hollywood Hotel.” Hollywood: Legend And Reality Edited by Michael Webb
Of course, the perception of Hollywood—the town and the movies—continues to change as it moves into the 21th century.
“The reason that I am a writer today is Shakespeare.”
Three-time Oscar nominated screenwriter John Logan (Hugo)
Unlock the Secret
Here it is, in just under 1,000 words, the secret of being a successful screenwriter. (From the lips of a bona fide and currently successful screenwriter.)
There was some disappointment yesterday when the Oscar nominations were announced. (Isn’t there always?) While there were some new faces, in general, many felt it was a lot of the usual suspects; Scorsese, Spielberg, Sorkin, etc.
It’s a little bit like the Super Bowl this year— The Patriots verses the Giants. Brady verses Manning. Haven’t we seen that before? In fact, we have—Super Bowl XLII back in 2008 when the New York Giants and Manning defeated a then undefeated New England Patriot team led by Brady. There is one simple reason why these those two quarterbacks are in facing each other in the Super Bowl again—they are two of the best quarterbacks in professional football.
Ditto that from a filmmaking perspective for Scorsese, Spielberg, Sorkin…Clooney, Pitt, Streep, Malick, Alexander Payne, and Woody Allen.
But there is one screenwriter that is not a household name outside of Hollywood (as someone like, say, Diablo Cody) who had a killer year in 2011—John Logan. Though a top A-list Hollywood screenwriter, I think by design, he flies a little under the radar for even the average moviegoer.
He’s nominated for writing the film Hugo. A film that led the field for the 2012 Oscars with a total of 11 nominations. But wait, there’s more! He also wrote Rango (featuring Johnny Depp) which received an Oscar nomination for Animated Feature Film. But wait there’s still more! He also wrote Coriolanus which was released in 2011 and picked up a BAFTA nomination for its director Ralph Fiennes. Yes, 2011 was a very good year for John Logan.
And it’s not like he’s a newcomer. He’s fifty-years-old and has been nominated for an Academy Award twice before; The Aviator (2004) and Gladiator (2000). On top of that his credits also include Any Given Sunday, The Last Samurai, and Sweeney Todd.
So here’s the really important question? What’s his secret? Glad you asked. John Logan has the answer;
“I graduated from Northwestern. I had no money. No one had any money. So I got a day job, shelving books at the Northwestern University Law Library. Every morning I would work from nine to five and shelve books, for ten years. Every single day for ten years.
I lived in a tiny studio apartment where you could practically touch the walls. Outside the window was a place that installed car alarms, so at all hours it was car alarms. I lived on tuna fish, which I still will not eat to this day. I learned to de-bone a chicken because it was cheaper. And it was hard. And it was the greatest time of my life because I had no expectations of anything but learning how to do my job, which was to be a playwright….And my plays were put on in teeny little church basements or in back allies, in theaters that were condemned while the play was going on. It was fantastic. It was a very vibrant time in Chicago theater, and I loved it. I spent ten years learning how to do my job and it was fantastic.”
His writing eventually got noticed and he landed an agent in L.A., Brian Siberell at CAA. He didn’t have any assignments, but moved to L.A. and took nine months to write his first screenplay, which eventually became Any Given Sunday. But not, according to Logan, until he and Oliver Stone did a few re-writes;
“We did 26 drafts of Any Given Sunday, one right after another, so I learned everything about the form from him. He was patient. I’d go to his house, he’d say, ‘Pick up that Oscar, hold it, it’ll feel good, you’ll enjoy it.’ And then we’d work. Any Given Sunday, like all these monstrous big movies, was hard to get made.”
In case you missed it—26 drafts. That’s after his spending nine months writing and re-writing it on his own. 26.
Still with me? Still want to be a screenwriter? If so, here’s the bomb. From the lips of John Logan, here’s the most powerful, and potentially life-changing advice as you’ll ever find for being a screenwriter;
“If you want to be a screenwriter—a successful screenwriter—here’s the secret…This is what you have to do, it’s great—don’t tell anyone. You have to read Hamlet, and you have to read it again, and you have to read it until you understand every word. And then you move onto King Lear. And then maybe treat yourself to Troilus and Cressida.
And then you know what? Then you’re going to go back and read Aristotle’s Poetics until you can quote it. And then you’re going to read Sophocles, and then you’re going to read Ibsen, and then you’re going to read Tony Kushner, and then you’re going to read Chekhov. You’re going to understand the continuum of what it is to be a dramatist, so you have respect for the form in which you are trying to function. So you understand what comes before you. Then, if you chose, watch a couple of movies.”
On Monday I was a guest speaker at a college and asked, “Is screenwriting hard?” I think Mr. Logan answers that question quite well.
Here are the CliffsNotes on John Logan’s path to successful screenwriting:
* Study acting and playwriting in well-established Midwestern college with successful writer/actor alumni
* Devour Shakespeare
* 10 years of starving and learning his craft (while working a non-creative day job)
* Writings (finally) get him an L.A. agent
* Sells script to Oliver Stone and then does 26 drafts
* Becomes a wealthy and in demand writer complete with a house in Malibu
* Receives several Oscar nominations
The above quotes from Logan are from his BAFTA talk on September 20, 2011. Below is the You Tube 2-minute teaser which as of this writing only has 339 views. (Link to PDF of full talk.) Seriously, if there is one post I’ve ever written that I think you should pass on to fellow writers via Twitter, Facebook, text, email, or whatever— it’s this post.
Special thanks to BAFTA and the BFI Screenwriters Lecture Series in association with the JJ Charitable Trust for the work they do.
Tomorrow we’ll be back looking at the continuum of film history. (Inspired by my seeing Hugo and The Artist earlier this year.)
P.S. As big a year as Logan has had in 2011, 2012 doesn’t look like it’s going to be bad for him either. On top of possibly winning his first Oscar, he’s credited on the soon to be released Lincoln directed by Spielberg, and is also credited on the new James Bond film Skyfall which is currently being filmed.
Update 1/26/11: Found this nice little nugget about Logan:
“What I value most of all is his extraordinary knowledge of everything under the sun — film, theater, painting, literature, world history, you name it. I can tell you he’s absolutely unique is that sense and it gives him a real advantage as a writer.”
Martin Scorsese LA Times article
Inspired by seeing the silent film The Artist (2011) I’ve spent most of the past week or so reflecting on the early days of motion pictures, and since the Academy Award nominations are today it seems fitting to look back on the first Academy Awards on May 18, 1929.
One of the most significant things about that date is it was just five months before the Stock Market Crash in October of 1929, which began the Great Depression. Another interesting fact is the award ceremony only last 15 minutes—a far cry from the marathon 3 hour plus modern ceremonies. It also reflected not on one year of films as done today, but on a two-year period of 1927 & 1928.
So the first Academy Awards really represent a shift from the early silent era into what is known as “The Golden Age of Hollywood.” The beginning of syncretized sound pictures in 1927 through sometime around 1930 when detailed attendance records began being kept, film going attendance in the USA was at an all time high of 90 million moviegoers per week (which was around 60% of the population). Just as a comparison, these days in the United States the weekly movie going attendance is less that 30 million people (or 10% of the population).
Back in 1929, the First Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story went to Underworld by Ben Hecht, beating out The Last Command by Lajos Biro. (Ironically, a movie titled Underwordhappened to be the box office winner this past weekend). And Best Writing, Adapted Story went to Benjamin Glaser for Seventh Heaven (beating out Glorious Betsy by Anthony Coldway and The Jazz Singer by Alfred A. Cohn.). The best picture was the silent film Wings.
And you know those title cards that sometimes popped up on silent movies? They had an Oscar for that in 1929. (The only year it was given.) Best Writing, Title Writing went to George Marion Jr. (for No Specific Film) beating out The Private Life of Helen of Troy by Gerald Duffy.
What’s interesting about the Best Writing, Original Story for Underworld and Ben Hecht is look at the other people who are listed on credits who did not partake in Oscar victory; Adaptation by Charles Furhmann, Screen play by Rober N. Lee and Titles by George Marion, Jr.
“Here’s my unsolicited advice to any aspiring screenwriters who might be reading this: Don’t ever agonize about the hordes of other writers who are ostensibly your competition. No one else is capable of doing what you do.” Diablo Cody (Oscar-winning screenwriter—and Univ. of Iowa grad—who gave me the inspirational jolt to start this blog.) Introduction/Juno: The Shooting Script
Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of this Screenwriting from Iowa blog. If you’ve followed this blog much, you may know that I started in 2008 with what I thought was a fairly ambitious goal to write 50,000 words in a year. The first year I surpassed that goal easily and by the end of 2011 I had written over 500,000 words.
The full title of this blog is Screenwriting from Iowa…and Other Unlikely Places. Specifically Iowa because it happens to be where I live and it generally is seen as a mythically middle-of-nowhere kind of place. Of course, over the past four years I’ve highlighted a lot of work and writers from many unlikely places.
And for the fourth anniversary, I wanted to point out four recent inspirational stories from more unlikely places.
1) Kalamazoo, Michigan definitely qualifies as an unlikely place to find filmmaking success, yet just a couple of weeks ago Cindy Gustafson finished shooting most of her first feature film there in her home state. She completed the script A Chance of Rainlast year and it turned into her directorial debut. Cindy is not only a frequent commenter on this blog, but credits it with encouraging her to continue pursuing her screenwriting career even though she lives far from Los Angeles. I will be doing an interview with Cindy this week.
Cindy Gustafson on set the first day of her directorial debut
2) James Erwin from Des Moines, Iowa is not only a two-time “Jeopardy!” champ, but in the Fall of 2011 he sold a high-concept pitch via the website Reddit.com. According to Variety, His pitch Rome, Sweet Rome caught the attention of Madhouse Entertainment’s Adam Kolbrenner who helped develop the concept and sell it to WB. Last week I was in Des Moines for an edit session and traded emails with James and plan on doing an interview with him this week as well for this blog.
Tom: “I campaigned for Obama in Iowa and every night we’d hang out in this bar in Des Moines. It was sort of the hot spot for reporters and upper level staff so I made a lot of relationships that way. There I met and became good friends with a young filmmaker named Amy Rice who was working on a documentary. Out of our friendship and getting to know her work, I ended up signing her as a client. Edward Norton ended up producing her documentary (By the People) and we sold it to HBO for quite a bit of money. She’s now developing new projects outside of that. So for me that would be the most interesting way I’ve signed a client.”
4) LA. The other LA. Louisiana. In a swampwater place called ‘The Bathtub.’ The film Beasts of the Southern Wild was written by Benh Zeitlin (who also directed the film) and Lucy Alibar (based on her play Juicy and Delicious) and is part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival where it’s gather a lot of buzz in the last couple of days.
“One of the most striking films ever to debut at the Sundance Film Festival, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a poetic evocation of an endangered way of life and a surging paean to human resilence and self-reliance. Shot along the southern most fringes of Louisiana, cast with nonactors and absolutley teeming with creativity in ever aspect of his being, Benh Zeitlin’s directorial debut could serve as a poster child for everything American independent cinema aspires to be but so seldom is.”
Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter 1/21/12
According to the THR, as of yesterday, there were “five distributors vying for the pic; Fox Searchlight, the Weinstein Co., Sony Pictures Classics, Oscillocope Films and IFC Films.”
And since I’m now technically in the fifth year of this blog I’ll toss in a bonus story:
5) Snohomish, Washington. Oscar-winning Alexander Payne (Sideways) is fresh of his latest film The Desecendants (which is soon to be nominated for an Oscar) and the next film he is planning on directing is Nebraska. He told Film School Rejects that, “It’s a father/son road trip from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska. but gets waylaid at a crappy town in central Nebraska where the father grew up and where he has some old scores to settle.” When Collider.com asked Payne if it was an original script he said, “Nebraska is an original script, by some guy Snobomish, Washington.” That some guy is screenwriter Robert Nelson. Robert was born in Yankton, South Dakota and back in 2006 Variety named him as on of the top 10 screenwriters to watch.
Steve Kotler at Variety wrote, “For Nelson, much of that craft was honed during the decade he spent working on Seattle-based sketch comedy show ‘Almost Live’ It was there that he turned his early childhood love of Bob Newhart, Woody Allen and Billy Wilder into his own brand of humor. It was through ‘Almost Live!’ that he met Bill Nye (who developed his Science Guy persona for that show). Through a roundabout series of steps, it was Nye who helped launch the scribes’s big screen career.”
So there you have it everywhere from Kalamazoo to Des Moines, from Snohomish to central Nebraska, all the way down to the backwaters of Louisiana prove there are still many stories to be told in unlikely places.
Thanks again for reading these posts and I look forward to hearing more stories from readers like Cindy who were inspired enough by something I wrote her to make her own feature. Thanks again to TomCruise.com for that plug back in 2010—still getting hits from that site. (Congrats as well for Ghost Protocol crossing the $500 million mark recently.)
And thanks to Adam Levenberg (author of The Starter Screenplay) —someone I met through doing this blog—for his taking the time to give me detailed notes on one of my scripts at the end of last year. Because views tend to go way down during the holidays, if you missed my post Screenwriter Gift Ideas check it out because Adam gave me the most detailed notes I’d ever received. (I’ll write more about what I learned about this process in the coming weeks.)
And thanks especially to the people who have signed up to recieve this blog post via a WordPress feed or email. That really does keep my feet to the fire to strive to write posts that will be worth your time.
Here’s to another year…may I finally get those 500,000 words into a concise book form in that 50,000 word range I was originally seeking when I started this blog.
Cheers—
H/T to Scott Myers and his blog Go Into the Story where I first learned about James Erwin’s sale and the Sundance buzz around Beasts of the Southern Wild.
“The only genius to come out of the movie industry.” George Bernard Shaw (on Charlie Chaplin)
“(Chaplin) is the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old.”
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
When most people think of silent movies they think of Charlie Chaplin. He’s kind of Mr. Silent Films because his movies were not only popular in his day, but they play well today, and will play well into the future. His 1931 film, City Lights (at #11) is the highest listed silent film on AFI’s list of The 100 Greatest American Movies.
According to one website, some of the greatest directors ever listed City Lights in their personal 10 ten film list; Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Bresson, David Lean, King Vidor, Milos Forman, and Stanley Kubrick. And to top it off—City Lights was Orson Welles’ #1 favorite film.
And while the actor Chaplin is well-known as The Tramp character from City Lights, fewer realize that he also produced and directed the film…and edited the film…and composed the music…and wrote the script. (How many people think of Charlie Chaplin as a screenwriter?)
Director Ella Kazan (On the Waterfront) actually lists two other films of Chaplin on his top ten: The Gold Rush and Shoulder Arms. And still favorites of others are Modern Times, The Great Dictator and The Kid—all written by Chaplin.But here’s a little known fact about Chaplin the writer—before he wrote all of those great feature films, over a period of five years (1914-1919) he wrote more than 65 short films.
So while Chaplin may have said, ”All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl”—that was also rooted in years of honing his writing skills working on those one and two-reelers that Hollywood was cranking out in its early years.
P.S. In writing and directing The Artist (2011) Michel Hazanavicius while wanting to create a silent movie set in the 1920s wanted to avoid that long shadow of Chaplin. And in an interview with Ethan Alter said, “When you speak of silent movies, everyone thinks of Charlie Chaplin first. And Chaplin was a genius, but he played a clown onscreen. I took the opposite tack — I wrote the script with a powerful man at the very beginning, but then the arc of the character has him becoming a kind of tramp at the end of the movie, like Chaplin. I showed Jean silent films like Sunrise and The Crowd and he understood quickly that he could act very naturally. I tried to tell the story with images and that way I didn’t have to ask the actors to pantomime. I wanted them to act as naturally as possible.”
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
Norma Desmond Sunset Blvd.
The perfect segue from a post on Gloria Swanson is one on Cecil B. DeMille. He not only had a cameo performance (as a director of Swanson) in the 1950 movie Sunset Blvd.—but he’s been called “the founder of Hollywood.” His first film as a director was Squaw Man in 1914 and his last as a producer was the 1958 film The Buccaneer. But it was the films he produced in directed in between that was his legacy; The Ten Commandments, Union Pacific, Samson and Delilah, Cleopatra, and The Greatest Show on Earth (for which won Best Picture in 1953).
Like many, especially those in the early days of film, DeMille started out in theater as an actor. His parents were playwrights and he performed on Broadway in beginning in 1900. DeMille went to California just as the Hollywood film business was beginning to mature. The short films of the 1890s and early 1900s set the stage for feature films. One of the main reasons DeMille is held in such high regard is he brought higher production values to the film he made.
He made his share of flops and then and now he had his share of critics of even his film that succeed, but DeMillle understood spectacle. In 1923 his version of The Ten Commandments was the most financially successful film up to that point in movie history. He remade the film in 1956 and today when adjusted for the film is listed as #5 on the all-time domestic box-office gross (ahead of Titanic).
DeMille’s abilty to make films that made money also allowed him to work with the greatest actors of his day— Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Gary Cooper, Dorothy Lamour, Charlton Heston, and, of course, Swanson.
On the downside he was known as a tyrannical director and his film The Crusades was the greatest financial flop up until that time in Hollywood history. Maybe it was DeMille’a failures as well as his successes that help set the tone for the Hollywood we have today.
Regardless of what you think of the man or his films he was a giant. He helped lay the foundation for Hollywood, survived the transition from silent films to the talkies, and worked up until he died in 1959—the same time television had become the dominant form of entertainment in American households depleting the movie going audiences of the past.
I really should end this post with a little inspiration from Mr. DeMille: “Most of us serve out ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.”
P.S. DeMille’s connection to the mostly silent film The Artist currently in theaters? DeMille, in not wanting congress to govern Hollywood, helped set up The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (The Hays Code). Since The Artist writer/director Michel Hazanavicius was making a film set in the 1920s he decided to abide by the Hays Code which is why you won’t see “excessive and lustful kissing.” (Though, of course, the Hays Code didn’t become official until 1930 I imagine there must have been some agreed upon standards before it was formally adopted.) According to Wikipedia, The Hays Code was abandoned in 1968 in favor of the MPAA film rating system.
“I am big— it’s the pictures that got small.” The faded from glory silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Blvd.
“We didn’t need dialogue—we had faces.” Norma Desmond (Sunset Blvd.)
Yesterday it was announced that (mostly) silent film The Artist lead the race for the British Academy Film Awards with a total of 12 nominations.
So in it seems fitting to continue to glance back at the silent film era. In real life around the time that the fictional story The Artist takes place, the highest paid actress was Gloria Swanson. In a 1957 interview Mike Wallace called her, “One of Hollywood’s most spectacular links with its glamorous heyday.” My introduction to her in film school was not her silent films, but her Oscar-nominated performance in Sunset Blvd. (1950) where she played a faded and forgotten film star.
The Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett/D.M Marshman Jr. written film is one of my all-time favorites. (It’s also #12 on AFI’s list of America’s Greatest Movies.) It’s also one of those film that gets richer over time as I appreciate another layer of the film. Even that line “I am big—it’s the pictures that got small” has a new meaning today as people watch movies on computers, iPads and cell phones.
A silent movie clip in Sunset Blvd. that is supposed to be a Norma Desmond in her big screen glory days directed by her now butler is actually the 1929 film Queen Kelly staring Swanson and directed by Erich von Stroheim (who plays the butler in Sunset Blvd). If Norma Desmond was a real person and alive today she may at least appreciate that though pictures haven gotten even smaller Queen Kelly has its own Facebook page. Another memorable line in Sunset Blvd. is when von Stroheim tells Norma, “Madame is the greatest star of them all.” A line that newspapers headlines play off of when Swanson died in 1983.
It was wondered if Swanson would make the transition from the silent era to the talkies. Her first speaking role was The Trespasser (1929) for which she earned an Oscar nomination. (And a film the was reportedly written in three weeks by Edmund Goulding who also directed the movie.)
The backlash for The Artist has already started. I’m glad I saw the film in an art house theater with little expectations. Despite whatever awards it wins, perhaps the greatest value of The Artist is reintroducing people to silent movies. To giving a nod to the creative people of the past whose work is often not simply forgotten, but not even known about in the first place.
Here is a scene from Sunset Blvd. that featured several silent movie stars that hadn’t been seen on screen in years. It’s been said that this scene made audience gaps when first seen. (Imagine a movie scene in 20 years featuring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Will Smith and Angelina Jolie—a few years past their prime— sitting around passing time playing cards.)
And as nod to show you how dangerous they kicked it back in the ole’ days here is a Gloria Swanson interview recounting a scene from the 1919 film Male and Female.
Oh, and for what it’s worth—Gloria Swanson was born in Chicago.
Related post: Screenwriting from Sunset Blvd. (Show what happens sometimes to screenwriters from Ohio who struggle in Hollywood.)
“You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer
In light of (the mostly silent) film The Artist moving forward during the award season, it’s a fitting time to look backward on the film industry.
Imagine being thirty something and going to the movie theater in 1927 to see The Jazz Singer. Every movie that you’ve seen up to that point has been a silent film. In the larger cities a group of musicans may have played music along with the picture, and smaller cities would have a pianist. The beginning of sync sound coupled with The Great Depression of 1928 had a devestating effect on working muscians.
But the talkies were a cash crop for the studios as movie audiences grew throughout the 1930s.
The Jazz Singer was based on the short story The Day of Atonement by Samson Raphaelson which he tuned in his play The Jazz Singer. The play was a major hit on Broadway for the 1925-26 season (303 performances). And as big a year as 1927 turned out for Raphaelson, his biggest successes were still more than a decade away. The Ernst Lubitsch directed film The Shop Around the Corner (1941) was written by Raphaelson as was the 1941 Hitchcock directed film Suspicion.
Later in his life he returned to his early New York roots and wrote the book The Human Nature of Playwriting (1949) and taught screenwriting at Columbua University from 1976 until 1982. The book Three Screen Comedies by Samson Raphaelson: Trouble in Paradise, The Shop Around the Corner, Heaven Can Wait (with an introduction by Pauline Kael) was published in 1983—the same year he died at the age of 89.
“I am a better craftsman than Eugene O’Neill, no comparison. Than Tennessee Williams, no comparison. But they’re much better playwrights than I am…Their life, in both cases, feed, marvelously, into their plays. Their tragedies are part of the tragedies that they write. And Tennessee Williams writes one marvelous and [one] bad play after another, which, if he sat down with me for two hours, I could do miracles on. But I’d never be as good as the guy who wrote it.”
Samuel Raphealson Creativity with Bill Moyers
(Pulled from the article Accent on Youth, The Curious Case of Smason Raphaelson by Smith Galtney)
Want a nice Midwest connection to A Jazz Singer? Well, here it is anyway. According to IMDB, Raphaelson graduated from the University of Illinois in 1917 and worked as a journalist and in advertising before his stage and film success. And the writer of the screenplay, Alfred A. Cohn, was born in Freeport, Illinois. And also according to IMDB, he got a newspaper job in Cleveland before eventually moving to Hollywood where he wrote for more than 100 movies. His lone Oscar nomination was for The Jazz Singer.
“Was not Jesus an extremist for love — ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.’ Was not Amos an extremist for justice — ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
I’ve never been able to successfully figure out how to put embedded Viemo videos on this blog…until today. (What can I say? I’m a slow learner.) So here’s a little bonus on Martin Luther King Day—part of a video I had an opportunity to work on a couple of years ago with artist Gary Kelley, conductor Jason Weinberger, and the Waterloo—Cedar Falls Symphony.
It may not be a big Hollywood production, but to be able to work on a production with a talented group of people on a multi-media event (large screen projection and a live symphony orchestra)—that gets a triple standing ovation from more than 1,000 people— makes for one rewarding experience.
