History Lesson 
Film Fatale
Not one, but TWO film festivals were held in Dallas, and the battle scenes weren't all on the screen.
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In an attempt to beef up the schedule Carson had gotten five screen writers to fly in from Los Angeles to participate in a panel on Monday evening. They all looked to be about thirty and had written movies like Judge Roy Bean, The Getaway and Shamus. They were not convinced that the occasion was in any way serious, which indeed it wasn't. "Screen writing," one said, "is like sex—you're only as good as that last one." At the same time the audience proved something of a befuddlement to them. One grandmotherly looking woman with a triangular green scarf wrapped tightly around her grey head asked if the panelists thought LSU would be a good school for someone who wanted to be a screenwriter. Frantic whispers passed back and forth across the stage until one of the five squinted back at the lady and asked incredulously, "Does that mean Louisiana State University?" Later that night, back at their hotel the writers were among a party of about a dozen sundry folks who testified aloud to preposterous personal accomplishments and were entertained by a young dancer from Dallas, herself interested in a career in show business, who has chosen the stage name Fonda Peters.
There were no movies on Wednesday, so I walked around downtown Dallas trying to keep myself from going to yet another movie out of sheer boredom. In the past three days I had seen seven full length features and so many shorts and excerpts that I could no longer separate them in my mind. I asked a few pedestrians if they knew about the United States Festival that was going on or the USA Festival coming next week. I got quick frightened "no's" for answers.
On Thursday the festival resumed with a vengeance. At 10 a.m. came the first moments of what were to be all 12 episodes (at an hour an episode) of the PBS Television Series An American Family. The rationale for showing the series was that it represents a kind of filmmaking that will become more important in the future. I agree. I think it should have been shown. I could not bring myself to watch it all. As the tenth episode came to a close late in the afternoon (the remaining two were to be shown later that evening), I ducked into the theater to see how many long distance moviegoers had endured. I saw only one—a young, slight, oddly dressed person with dyed red hair. I had not noticed him at the festival before. The tenth episode ends with Lance Loud giving a big performance on top a piano. As the lights in the theater went up, the lone spectator leapt to his feet in wild applause. It was Lance himself.
In a panel that evening, Lance became the recipient of the bluntest question asked at either festival. Out of the audience of about 80, a gentleman arose and in semi-concealed scorn asked, "Just what are you anyway? A fag or what?"
"Well, I don't know," Lance answered into an uncomfortable silence. "I've become so confused about the whole thing I hardly have sex anymore."
Minelli's Lust for Life, in which Kirk Douglas performs remarkably well as Van Gogh, played that same evening. The ear-cutting sequence taught me something I had never understood about movies. The scene begins when Van Gogh, already emotionally frenzied, his face twisted and mouth agape, stares in horror into a mirror. We are looking at him from behind and see his frightening reflection framed by the oval mirror on a blank wall. He leans his forehead against the glass for a moment, then seized by new fury he jerks away from the mirror and disappears from the screen. Silence. The camera remains fixed on the mirror. We see a circle of sweat where his forehead has been. Then, from off-screen comes a gruesome, wrenching sound followed by an awful moan. The camera does not move. In the mirror we see Van Gogh stagger across the screen with his hand held to the side of his head, blood forcing its way through his fingers.
What I learned was why certain violent scenes, like this one, made me actually feel the violence. Minelli, having fixed my eye on the screen by the spot of sweat on the mirror, forced me to imagine what was happening off screen. The wrenching noise stopped those imaginings on a dime—I knew what was happening then—and the jolt was physical.
Many other films, both at this festival and the one that would follow, contained scenes of bloody violence complete with jets of spurting blood and stop-frame photography of limbs wrenched from sockets. The mistake was forcing us to look so closely at the physical details. Either we cannot look, turn away in disgust, and the director has lost us completely; or we continue to look, wondering what new horror will be exposed and the watching becomes everything. Instead of being made to feel; we are made to look; and that is really the distinction between a great movie and whatever other kinds there are.
Minelli arrived at the discussion wearing his yellow tie, the one bright spot in his otherwise somber festival wardrobe. He sat on stage looking a little uncomfortable, answering questions shyly. His hand trembled as it carried a cigarette to his mouth. It was quite late. He was tired and we, a dogeared collection of 25 or 30 moviegoers, were tired too.
On Friday the best new film in either festival, Savages, played to 65 people. The United States Festival was plagued from the start with poor promotion, sudden program changes, and a theater downtown. Friends of mine turned down free passes because it was too much trouble after a day at work to drive back downtown just to watch movies. The event was also hamstrung by a dearth of movies with ready-made popular appeal and not enough celebrities to draw crowds. At the end of the festival, its sponsors, The Moving Image Association, found themselves about $30,000 in debt.
On that dour note I would like to skip ahead to Sunday evening for the last moments of the festival and for a party that served as an overture to SMU's USA Film Festival. It is not that Friday evening and Saturday were without interest. In fact Saturday night there was a director's panel which included Jack Nicholson and Les Blanc, a young filmmaker from Louisiana whose brilliant documentary, Dry Wood and Hot Peppers, was screened that morning. I shall also skip over the elevator meeting between Nicholson and Minelli after which Minelli, smiling amiably, uttered a totally uncharacteristic comment: "Boy, is he stoned." And excluded too shall be an account of the showing of Neil Young's film Journey through the Past, which drew by far the largest crowds of the festival. And both excluded and unmentioned are several movies, directors, actors, etc., who might or might not make interesting copy—we shall never know. Last, and in many ways the saddest omission, is the tale of my own film-weary and fog-bound wanderings which led me to a brightly lit and crowded public house where I won 12 straight drinks by vanquishing all comers at air hockey and, in the manner of celluloid cowboys everywhere, strode off into the night leaving behind neither silver bullets nor any other clues to my concealed identity.
Though I may have been a terror in that bar, the party to kick off the USA festival was one of those crowded, showy, elegant affairs that always make me feel that wallpaper has the best shake in life; it's so effortlessly inconspicuous. Held in an immense red brick and white-pillared mansion, with a front walk wide as a city street and seemingly as endless, the party was supposed to have been on the lawn; but wind and rain, the scourges of the previous Sunday, returned with a vengeance. Consequently, the four or five hundred guests squeezed themselves one by one into the house where they were forced to ooze past one another in hallways and on stairs as they balanced small plates of catered ham and turkey served on little round rolls.
The only guest above these difficulties was Raoul Walsh, the 86-year-old director of, among others, White Heat, High Sierra and Battle Cry, whose work was to be honored at this festival as Minelli's had been at the other. He sat in state in a large leather chair at one end of a library which had books from floor to ceiling. Mr. Walsh is a Texan, although he left here nearly 70 years ago. He still dresses, however, like a prosperous rancher in brown western pants, beautiful tooled leather boots, and a white stetson. A black patch covering his right eye sets all this off. Surrounded by books, leather, mahogany and admirers in party plumery, he looked grand.
Theresa Alexander, the United States Festival manager, for reasons known only to herself, arrived at the party with Brian DePalma, who was an invited guest since his film was showing at the festival. Nevertheless, the party for the rival festival was, to say the least, an odd place for Theresa to be. The host, who didn't realize that she had come with DePalma, asked her to leave. Jack Nicholson and Lou Adler had arrived in the same group and immediately began putting on their coats.
"You don't have to leave, Mr. Nicholson," the host said.
"Yes, I do," he snapped. "A member of my party has been asked to leave and I'm leaving with them."
The most embarrassing part was that Brian DePalma was made to leave the opening party for a festival honoring one of his own films. It was the only event during the two weeks that seemed to be happening in a novel rather than a movie.
My Library
