Why John Ford?

This past December, Fox released the mammoth "Ford at Fox" DVD set, consisting of 24 of the director's films produced at Fox between 1920 and 1952.

This is quite rightly celebrated as a good move on Fox's part. Ford is indeed an important American filmmaker, and the body of his work deserves to be shown. The DVDs themselves are flawless, and contain beautiful transfers. Why, then, does this set cause me just a bit of disappointment mixed in with the gratitude toward Fox for releasing it?

The answer is quite complicated, but it involves several factors that have become very apparent to me in the last couple years. As film has come to be seen more and more as a niche interest, there has been more of an effort to advertise and promote "classic films" the way other companies advertise cars or clothing. As a result, certain directors come to represent successful brand names that can be used as kind of "flag words" in promoting a DVD set, say, or a broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.

The fact is, Ford, like many directors, made an overwhelming number of very average films. But how likely is it that you'll hear paid reviewers offer such an opinion of the lesser films on the "Ford at Fox" set? Or, more broadly, how likely are you to hear a negative opinion about a film being shown on Turner Classic Movies? These people are in the business of selling classic movies, and you're no more likely to hear a single dissenting remark about any film, no matter how bad or mediocre it may be, then you would be to hear a car salesman admit that his product has some flaws in it.

John Ford has become something of the American filmmaker equivalent of a Mozart, at least among those knowledgable about and appreciative of film. He's automatically called a genius, but how many people, outside of those literate in film, of course, can name one of his films? Or, how many have actually seen one of his films? Just to be clear, I don't mean to suggest that the majority of film historians or movie buffs have never seen a Ford film. Indeed, within the circle, so to speak, Ford is probably one of the most accessible and well-represented artists. But outside of that, I wonder how many people can now tell the difference between a Ford film and, say, Red River? I realize this is a controversial claim to make, and I'm sure that anyone reading this blog will fall out of their chair at the very suggestion. But go to the local gas station, or retail store, or restaurant, and ask someone to name a Ford film, and see what kind of response you get.

In addition, there is a very real concern that while Ford undoubtedly deserves such a tribute as the "Ford at Fox" set, there are many other directors from the same era who, because they lack the brand-name recognition value, will never have their work see the light of day again. As much as I undoubtedly admire Ford, there are at least a half-dozen other American filmmakers from this same period whose work I would like to own a comprehensive collection of. Off the top of my head, the most notable would have to be Frank Capra, whose pre-It Happened One Night work is sadly neglected. Henry King, to be sure, would be another one. King directed some of the finest films of the silent era, and continued well into the 1950s. His work is long overdue for re-evaluation. Another clear choice is Henry Hathaway, the director of such action films as Lives of a Bengal Lancer and The Real Glory. Hathaway, whose work includes such late-career greats as True Grit, is surely just as deserving of a collection of his work. What of Frank Lloyd, whose 1933 masterpiece Cavalcade remains the only Best Picture-winner not available in a digital home video format? King Vidor, surely one of the most diverse of American filmmakers of the period, is sadly neglected on DVD outside a few of his bigger titles. Finally, and perhaps most obviously, how about Josef von Sternberg, one of the supreme stylists of the 1930s American film? A couple of his collaborations with Marlene Dietrich are available, but what about his late-silent period films and early 1930s pictures such as An American Tragedy? (And Sternberg's films were all produced by Paramount, which would surely make a comprehensive collection more cost-effective from a licensing standpoint).

While I'm certainly glad to see Ford's work get the kind of proper presentation it deserves, I can't help but feel a tinge of disappointment for the directors whose work isn't deemed "marketable" enough (although, I know alot of people who'd gladly line up for Capra and Sternberg sets, and I would certainly welcome a Henry King set above the others any day of the week).

"Annie" in widescreen

While browsing through a Rite Aid pharmacy today, I came across a shelf of DVDs, and decided to see if there was anything interesting among their collection for sale. Most of them were recent releases, nothing that couldn't be found elsewhere.

One DVD caught my eye. It was John Huston's 1982 musical "Annie", which Huston made just before his excellent 1985 comedy drama "Prizzi's Honor". Among recent musicals, "Annie" is actually one of my favorite. I've never seen the stage show, but I own two recordings of the cast album (in addition to the soundtrack album to Huston's film), and I enjoy the score immensely. The show's book is also a lot of fun, capturing the period feel of the era very well (the book is by Thomas Meehan, frequent collaborator with Mel Brooks, including the 2001 smash hit "The Producers" and this year's "Young Frankenstein").

Huston brings a real sense of period flavor to the film, especially the New York street scenes, the radio program scenes, and my favorite, the scene in which Albert Finney and company go to a vintage 1930s movie palace to see Greta Garbo in "Camille" (accompanied by that wonderful tune, "Let's Go to the Movies"). I've often said that this film could only have been made as it was by someone who'd lived through the era it depicts.

Huston's wide range as a filmmaker hardly needs to be recounted here. In this, his first musical, he handles the music numbers exceptionally well, with some of the best-photographed and choreographed numbers this side of a vintage MGM musical (the use of the steadicam during the "Hard Knock Life" number is one of the best uses of that technique I've seen).

Which brings me to the big surprise of this DVD I found. Huston carefully used the widescreen frame to full advantage in this film, but aside from a 1994 laserdisc release, the film has only been available in fullscreen editions (featuring very noticeable and distracting pan-and-scanning). The 2002 special edition DVD was a real disappointment in that Columbia only provided a fullscreen transfer. Ironically, in the documentary that accompanies the film, they used widescreen clips, whetting our appetite for what we were missing out on. I had read, just recently, that there has in fact been a widescreen DVD edition released, but that it came out only briefly in 2000, and was long since out of print.

When I found the DVD today, I noticed that it was the earlier release from 2000 which has been long out-of-print and hard to find. I've seen this disc selling for over a hundred dollars on eBay. Rite Aid was selling it for $9.99. Needless to say, I picked it up right away.

It's ashame that at this point, there are still fullscreen-only editions of films on DVD.

On Facebook and MySpace

As some of you may know, I have been an active user of the social networking site Facebook since the spring of 2006, and have been using MySpace since about fall of that same year. (I promise this is related to filmmaking; bear with me).

In many ways, I came late to the social networking sites, but I feel I grasped their full potential very quickly. As a college student, it was more or less required that I join Facebook. I don’t say that as an exaggeration, or to be cute. In order to keep up with fellow students on group projects (especially as I moved in to advanced production courses), the networking capabilities of Facebook made communication quite simpler.

In my early days on Facebook, I also created a group, called “Student Filmmakers on YouTube”, that I hoped would serve as a kind of bridge between the Facebook and YouTube sites for film students to share and promote their work, and leave feedback and criticism. The group never grew into anything larger than the few initial members, and was abandoned almost immediately. This was my first setback in attempting to use Facebook as a means of promoting my videos.

After joining MySpace, I confess I had to wonder what the point was. Almost everyone on that site who I wanted to keep in touch with was already on Facebook, and the interface was quite poorly designed in my opinion. As much as I wanted to explore the capabilities of MySpace, I considered it a sort of dead end.

Getting back to Facebook, I have continued to use the site for “professional” purposes (outside of the occasional email or message, I do all my “socializing” in real life rather than online), using it mainly as a means of promoting my new work that I was posting to YouTube. Other than that, I found Facebook increasingly pointless, and when I graduated from college in August 2007, had all intentions of closing my account with them and being done with it.

But then, Facebook added a new feature that changed the way I used the site. They added a video feature that I was quite excited about, as it allowed uploads up to 300 MB (3 times as much as YouTube), and allowed for easy video sharing among my online friends. I quickly uploaded my most recent work and went to work promoting it.

It was after the release of my latest video, “Block”, in November, that I became aware of a couple of realities that have halted my plans to use Facebook further:
1) The videos I upload to my profile are only available to people I’ve added as a “friend”, and are only able to be viewed by a limited number of people in my networks. This substantially limits my audience to only people I know personally, which decreases the level of objective feedback and criticism I can expect, and also gives me little hope of reaching any new viewers outside that circle.
2) While my first two videos I posted (“Laughter and Medicine” and “Roadside Therapy”) fared okay (they both received a handful of comments, more than I was getting at YouTube), I was still a little disappointed. My disappointment turned to out and out chagrin with the release of “Block”, which, I suspect, due to its much more subtle approach to character-based comedy, fared very poorly at Facebook, without a single response despite being sent to over 120 viewers. This video (which, incidentally, I consider to be the best work I’ve done) proved to me that, in reaching the audience that I have at Facebook, I had to modify my view of their expectations. However, I was not (and am not) willing to modify my work to meet those expectations.
3) Concurrent with my general disenchantment with Facebook (not just the video feature, but an increasing number of harmless but ultimately pointless applications, as well as constant messages every time someone takes a “trivia quiz”), I discovered MySpace Film.

MySpace Film appears to be much closer to the sort of “video networking” that I had hoped for in Facebook. Allowing the ability to upload directly to the site, count the number of views, and even receive comments, not to mention the ease in communicating with other filmmakers not in your immediate network (including filmmaker forums), as well as the ability to search for videos using keywords a la YouTube, I must admit I am currently very optimistic about this new venue.

After mulling over the full ramifications of my creating a Filmmaker’s account with them, I decided to go ahead, launching the Landmark Films profile as of December 9, 2007. Uploading my last five comedy videos, I hope to reach the wider audience I have been seeking.

What does all this mean in terms of MySpace specifically? I will try to outline, briefly, some of the differences I see in the sites, and how I feel they affect my attempts at video distribution.

The audience at Facebook tends to consist of early-20-something college students, or recent college graduates. This is quite useful in terms of trying to reach an “educated” audience, but it also poses some problems. Let’s take the film student audience as an example. As a result of the kind of expectations of what constitutes “proper” filmmaking, a video like “Block” (a non-narrative comic piece, shot in black and white, featuring no dialog and a highly stylized sound design in the service of subtle sight gags) is much less likely to win approval than, say, “Roadside Therapy”, a narrative comedy with more accessible filmmaking and humor. While this may sound like an odd concern at first, it is a very real one for a videomaker such as myself interested in moving beyond the narrative constraints.

MySpace TV, the video branch of the MySpace site, is one of the most handsomely designed video interfaces I have yet seen. While YouTube is still the premier site for online video (for now), I see the future of video moving toward the more interactive community of MySpace. The filmmaker forum is one such example of this. MySpace provides a forum in which videomakers can discuss their craft and offer criticism and advice. Facebook has none of this. The closest equivalent would be the wall for the main page of their Video application, but even this sees comparatively little activity compared to MySpace.

As MySpace continues to lose users to Facebook, it will be interesting to see if this results in an increase in quality. Facebook, I think, will continue to be the dominant site among college users. There is no doubt that, at this point in time, having a Facebook account is nearly a requirement for college students. It serves a number of legitimate purposes in addition to providing a diversion. MySpace will probably continue to be more popular among the non-college set. At this point in time, these demarcations seem pretty clearly established and are unlikely to change any time soon.

One area in which I believe MySpace will continue to grow, and indeed to surpass Facebook entirely, is in its music and film accounts. As their MySpace TV video feature has proven, there is an exciting market for interactive communication between filmmakers and their audience, as well as a way in which to talk about video in a way that goes beyond the short comment space as provided by YouTube.

I am very excited to see how MySpace continues to grow. What I had once written off as a useless site with a terrible interface has proven itself to be far more interesting than that. It’s still not perfect, mind, but the video feature seems, at this point, at least, to be where the future of online video is headed.