|
Picture
Books are for Children
Click
here for best printing of text
Interviewer:
Can I ask you a question about your books?
Carney: [Interrupting:] I
have a book question for you! Why do film books have pictures?
I can't tell you how many arguments I've had with editors about that.
Whenever
I've had a length problem in a film book, my first response is always:
“Well, let's not run any photos.” If you read a book about
Henry James' late style, there won't be any pictures of him in it.
What is this need to have
pictures in film books? It's like we're all in some kind of voodoo
cult, where
everyone has this magic notion that a photograph lets us touch an actor's
or director's soul. I have news to report. This just in. Mike Leigh's
soul is in his work, not his face. They knew that back
in Shakespeare's day. What's Ben Jonson's inscription to the First Folio?
“Look not on his picture – but in his book.” I had to
cut a lot of stuff out of my Leigh book to bring it in under 300 pages.
I
say take the damn photos out and let me put some more writing in!
Interviewer: Yet I remember
how upset you were when you had to cut illustrative material from the
Cassavetes on Cassavetes and Shadows books.
Carney: That's true. My Cambridge
University Press Cassavetes book started out with more than a hundred
photos. Cambridge only allowed me to put something like fifty in it for
reasons of space. I wanted to run two hundred in the Cassavetes on
Cassavetes book. I was really upset both times. I have this enormous
collection of behind-the-scenes Cassavetes photos that have never been
seen. Hundreds and hundreds of photos that have never appeared in a book
before. John gave me some of them; Sam and Larry Shaw gave me others;
and people who were on the shoots gave me others.
But these photos are different
from what is in the usual film book. They are not stupid glamour shots
or posed production stills. They reveal secrets about how scenes were
staged and shot. You can study Cassavetes' lighting and miking techniques
in them. You can read the numbers on slates to see how many takes he
did of a particular scene. You can watch him blocking scenes and showing
the
actors how to play the parts – like a choreographer working with
a dancer. You can study the expressions on actors' faces between takes
and
watch how they prepare their roles. Look at the photo I put on the back
of the John Cassavetes:The Adventure of Insecurity viewers'
guide. It's incredible. Or the ones I put in the A Woman Under the
Influence
chapter of my Cambridge Press book where Cassavetes is running around
showing Gena how to go crazy on camera. One of them is on the cover.
Or
the ones in the chapters on A Woman Under the Influence, The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night in my Cassavetes
on Cassavetes book. You could write a whole book about what those
photos reveal. Even with the photos in my Leigh book, I tried to redeem
the situation by putting in really deep, suggestive captions.
What I'm talking about is what's
in other film books. Hollywood Squares filler. Movie star glamour shots.
Posed production shots. Grainy frame enlargements. Why waste space that
way? Why include them at all? As the story about the captions I had to
cut from the Shadows book illustrates, [told in another section
of this interview] I put a lot of thought into the photos and captions
in my books, precisely because I don't want them to be like the eye candy
in every other film book. I want to make them count. I look at hundreds
of film books every year and almost never come across a single photo or
caption that makes me want to pause and think about it.
Interviewer: I know what
you mean about how you could write a book about the photos since
I heard
you give a whole lecture on the subject a few years ago. If I recall
correctly, you spent fifteen minutes talking about the photo on
the back of the Adventure
of Insecurity viewers' guide – because it revealed so
much about Falk and Rowlands and how Cassavetes directed them. But you
realize that
most people don't look at photos in your books or anyone else's that
carefully. They just want to see a picture of a movie star or a director,
glance
at it, turn the page, and forget it.
Carney: You know what people
like the most? Those fake behind-the-scenes shots – where Spielberg
is shown talking to the stunt man who drives the truck in the chase
scene.
People fall for them no matter how staged they are. It's like that stupid
television convention where they show you the control room the show
is
coming from. Or when Letterman or Leno take you backstage. Wow. The illusion
is that something is being revealed. People eat it up no matter how
unrevealing
it actually is. The photos I run really reveal something new.
I don't put celebrity glamour
photos in. And I don't really care if people don't get what is in
the
photos and captions. I refuse to dumb my writing down to grab the Saturday
Night Live crowd. I'm not writing for those kinds of people. That's
Hollywood logic – you try to reach the stupidest person in the
audience.
This page contains
an excerpt from an interview with Ray Carney. In the selection above,
he discusses the use of photos in film books. The complete interview
is available in a new packet titled "What's Wrong with Film
Teaching, Criticism,
and Reviewing – And
How to Do It Right," which covers many other topics.
For more information about Ray Carney's writing on independent film,
including
information about how to obtain the complete text of this interview and
two other packets of interviews in which he gives his views on film,
criticism,
teaching, the life of a writer, and the path of the artist, click
here..
|
