"Howard Waldrop - Drean Factories and Radio Pictures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

(Music recording was first, but it took the productтАФmass-producedтАФto a few people at a time. Plays
had large audiences, but someone seeing the same play in NYC and Cleveland is seeing two different
plays; for that matter, someone seeing a matinee and an evening performance of the same play in the
same theater with the same cast is seeing two different plays.) The moviesтАФonce past the
Kinetoscope-card one-viewer-at-a-time penny-arcade versionтАФshowed the same thing every time to
everyone who ever saw it, no matter where in the world. It was for forever (or as close to forever as
celluloid nitrate stock could be), and because it was forever, it changed the way people looked at their
transiently beautiful world. . . .

YouтАЩll see in my introductions to the individual stories what I call the Waldrop/Sennett universal plot
[hereafter, тАЬW/S u-plotтАЭ]: Tom Oakheart, Teddy the Keystone Dog, Oil Can Harry, Pearl. You can
illustrate almost anything in film with the likes ofTeddy at the Throttle (1916). Buddy movies? Tom and
Teddy. Romance? Tom, Pearl. Drama? That plot itself. Psychodrama? Why does Oil Can Harry want to
saw Pearl into wet kindling when she wonтАЩt put out for him? IsnтАЩt that counterproductive? And so on. (If
you think this is outdated: the film-within-the-film inThe Player , the one thatтАЩs always being pitched and
talked about is the W/S u-plot: Tom Oakheart [Willis] with Teddy [his Land Rover] rescues Pearl [Julia
Roberts] from the sawmill [gas chamber], where Oil Can Harry [The State of California] is killing her.
Yes or no?)

These things are imprinted on you and me from childhood as surely as if we were baby ducks. The
movies are as real (or more real) than the first grade or the SAT or your second car or тАЩNam or
whatever else we call life. TheyтАЩre part of it; theyтАЩre escape from it. What IтАЩm saying in all these stories is
that theyтАЩre beside life; a place we went thatтАЩs better or worse than what we have here, now . . .
***


Remember this while youтАЩre reading these stories about the moviesтАЩ past: How real they are.
Reporters waited outside the theater where the world premier ofThe Robe (1953тАФthe first movie using
the Cinemascope screen) took place. It was over. Sam Goldwyn, always good for a mangled quote,
came out.

тАЬWhat wasThe Robe about, Mr. Goldwyn?тАЭ they asked him.

тАЬIt was about a guy with fourteen-foot lips,тАЭ he said, and got in his limo, and left.
Introduction: Fin de Cycl├й
Is this a story about bicycles, or is it about the beginnings of film? You tell me. I always give stories a
reference title (before I give them a real one) by some private nameтАФthis I always thought of as тАЬthe
velocipede story.тАЭ But as I wrote it, it came to be as much or more about film as about two-wheeled
vehicles.
The early history of film is about what is called grammar. At first, films were one- or two-minute pieces of
lifeтАФtrains arriving at stations, waves breaking on the coast, workers leaving a factory. Audiences would
watch anything because it moved. The idea itself was astounding to them.

But then film started telling stories. (The Waterer Watered: gardener watering flowers; kid steps on
hose; gardener looks in hose; kid steps off hose; gardener gets face-full; gardener beats shit out of kid.
The End.) It was a minute long and it packed them in likeET .

But to do that, the Lumi├иre Bros. had to figure outhow to tell it: Show the gardener watering. Show the
kid stepping on the hose. Show the water flow stopping. Pretty simple. Cause and effect. Shot
continuously, like youтАЩre watching a stage show. Gardener over here, kid over there, hose, flowers, etc.